Sailing at Sorrento

Over the weekend of the 5,6,7th. of February I flew to Melbourne to join a special mate, Martin Ambrens, for a regatta at the Couta Boat club at Sorrento on Port Phillip Bay. I’ve never sailed a fishing boat before and believe me that’s what these things are/were. They range in size from 24ft to about 40ft although there are not many of the larger end still sailing. My mate Martin has one (sail No C77) that’s 34ft and he’s owned it now for a few years though this is his first year as helmsman and doing very well in hot competition.




Depending on size they sail with a crew of six to seven with five or six heavies and one light one available for various tidy up tasks as well as keeping a lookout to leeward. Just like the old eighteens. In fact having now sailed by invitation in both classes I can say that the experience is not dissimilar.


The class rules allow only a moderate accommodation for modern equipment, thus no exotic materials in sails or rigging. And limits are placed on purchase, so it’s mostly manpower that’s required to sail these beautiful boats.

Gaff rigged mains and overlapping headsails are the go and no extras are allowed…. Headsails can be poled out down wind, a must if you intend to be competitive. Like all centre-boarders they go best downwind when heeled to windward with the plate up, a very scary experience akin to sailing a saucer, and upwind when sailed flat. This latter is in my view impossible… All the boats in the regatta seemed, to my uneducated view, to be sailing upwind on their ear and downwind heeled to leeward… Beats me…

The next surprise was the Bay itself, the course, no matter how or where it’s located requires that the fleet deal with the tide… I mean the TIDE… not the wimpy stuff we have here in the Harbour, I mean real tide running up, down or across the course at up to 5 knots. Those of you that have sailed in rivers or say in Cowes will have some idea the difficulties that this give rise to. My favourite moment came when approaching a gybe mark square downwind, we gybed 200 meters upwind of the mark, went hard on the breeze and only just made the rounding. A manoeuvre that took us from fifth to second in the few moments it took the late gybers in front of us to realise the tide was running very fast indeed downwind.

The next remarkable experience was the extent to which the Sorrento club and my host went to make their visitors welcome. The club is situated in a beautiful little bay just East of Portsea with recently rebuilt club house and facilities all of which were first rate as indeed was the welcome. It’s a beach club with a real beach. The club includes a number of off the beach dinghy classes and their youth sailing programme starts from about 8 yrs or so.

Photo's by Martin Ambrens.

This is an extract from MySpace blog dated a week or so ago, those with access can go there for a more complete report.

PK