Since her return to competitive club racing Royal Flush has dominated competitive sailing at Gordon’s Bay Yacht Club (GBYC). Under skipper Denis Cochrane she took both line honours and first place on handicap in the opening three races of the All Comers Series, followed by a similarly dominant victory in the first Medium Distance race of the season.
Royal Flush has emerged as the biggest challenger to Nico van Wieringen’s Go Dutch, the 2021 and 2022 GBYC Champion Yacht. The Medium Distance event was the first where these two racers found themselves on the same course, and it was Royal Flush that emerged victorious.
The Medium Distance race was contested over a 21 nautical mile course, so the relative performance of the two yachts is yet to be seen on a shorter “round-the-cans” courses. The handicap difference between Royal Flush and Go Dutch is only 1% (in the latter’s favour), so the racing will be close.
Royal Flush is a once-off quarter-tonner design by the legendary Angelo Lavranos, built in 1982 to win the Lipton Cup Challenge under International Ocean Racing rules (she won Lipton in 1983 with Rick Nankin as skipper). In 1985, Royal Flush was shipped to Corsica, where she won the Quarter Tonner World Cup with Geoff Meek as skipper.
The L26, of which Go Dutch is an example, is also a Lavranos design. L26s were used as the one-class design for the Lipton Challenge Cup between 1984 and 2018.
There have been several other new arrivals in the GBYC marina worth noting. The masthead-rigged Stadt 34 Silver Girl, owned by Jaco Kriel and skippered by Paul Tanner, scored second place overall on the opening weekend of All Comers racing. She has since been sailed at the 2023 Mykonos Offshore race between Cape Town and Langebaan.
Dirk and Mariette Nolte’s new Holiday 23 Civis Mundi entered the opening weekend of the All Comers Series, and immediately made an impact on the mid-field, finishing fifth overall after a podium position in Race 2.
A recent addition to the harbour is the Holiday 34 Bowlyon, owned by Richard and Kim Bowes.
The next GBYC club season event is the Autumn Series Mini Regatta on the weekend of 1-2 April. The club is also expecting to enter boats into the Compass Rose night race in False Bay (18-19 March), as well as the Admiral’s Regatta at Hout Bay Yacht Club (25-26 March).
VFor more on sailing at GBYC, send an email to Eleonore Bondesio (manager) at gbyc@gbyc.co.za.
