Off The Beach: VX Ones, Finns and fierce rivalries As we rolled into the weekend and shifted gears towards longer passage racing, the Off the Beach fleets were welcomed party crashers, instantly turning the heat up on the water. By Monday, the dinghy classes pushed through the final day pursuit race to decide their tightly contested overall series. In the VX One division, Mack One, sailed by owner Alan Moffat, Danny Fuller and helmed by Ben Franklin, delivered a masterclass, stringing together a ruthlessly consistent series to lock away the overall title ahead of Peter Conde’s Lateshift and Garth Halton’s Unvexed. The Finn fleet racing was split into two parts: a two-day traditional four-race regatta in which you couldn’t slide a beer coaster between Larry Kleist on Annie, Kane Sinclair on Jazel, and Tristan Perez on Lonya. It ended in a nail-biting dead heat on points between Larry and Kane, with the countback ultimately handing the silverware to Annie, while Tristan breathed down their necks just a single point astern. The second part was an around Green Island chase race with a reverse order start, with boats starting 30 seconds apart using their finishing position from the four-race series and carrying double points. Lucas Prescott proved too slippery and couldn’t be caught by Larry, thus winning the inaugural Finn BRW honours. The Big Boats: giant-killers — and a lone cat Making every foot count in the Monohull Performance division, Stephen O’Brien proved that David really can beat Goliath. Flinging his little Spider 22, Tool Time, around the cans with brutal consistency, he managed to keep the massive, heavily-campaigned beasts like John Whitbread’s Ker 40 (KERB) and David Looke’s Archambault A40 (Broadsword) staring at his transom on the handicap leaderboard to snatch the overall PHS victory. In the Cruising division, Sandy Grant on Blackadder sailed away with the chocolates, holding off a fierce challenge from Danseur and French Kiss. Earlier in the week, Sandy confidently declared that his crew was brilliant and his furling gennaker was actually behaving itself; a rare and beautiful alignment of the stars that clearly paid off. A win by any means … Special mention must go to Bruce Hume on Dog House, who took out the Multihull division by virtue of being the only catamaran in the fleet. This wasn’t punishment, but a bold strategic move to eliminate the competition by simply being the only one to show up. A win is a win, and Bruce rightfully took home the silverware! Mainsheet 2026 Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron Yearbook 36 Brisbane Race Week 2026 presented by Porsche Centre Brisbane
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