The weather for the day was brilliant. It had been heavy rain the night before with rain blotting out the Brisbane Port lights from our balcony at Red View Apartments.

The good weather on the day saw a great turnout of the spectator fleet at both the start line and the first mark.

The favourite to take line honours is Black Jack, closely followed by her owner's previous yacht.

This account of the race start is brought to you by your favourite yachting commentator, Cisco, who happened to be blessed enough to be aboard a Hanse 575 with AIS, the works, which indicated that it would probably come in third if she was in the race.

The Hanse 575 rarely moves at anything less than 8 knots. Hanse Yacht are a top of the line item. Many thanks are due to John and Deborah for their gracious hospitality enabling this on the spot report to be made by,

Yours Truly, Cisco.

I have a problem uploading pics ATM. Computer won't recognise SD card.

I am away from home ATM using tablet.

Will try your advise when I get home.

Some puters will just not read some cards, simple as that. Try your card in another puter Cisco and see if it reads in that, if so then copy the files off your card onto another one and try that new card in your puter.

This is the sequence of photos I took at the race start of the Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race 2015.

The eventual race winner "Black Jack" with "South Passage" full of punters coming out for a look.


I said it was a beautiful day and the pictures tell the tale.





Quite a machine is "Black Jack" with her 10 or 12 foot dagger boards.














This is obviously the Hanse 575 from which I took the photos. Notice the fibreglass mouldings port and starboard of the mast under which pass all the control lines from the mast back to the electric winches at the helm position.

This yacht can be easily sailed by two people which is what you would expect from a Hanse 575 yacht in fairly standard configuration costing around $500,000.

If you have an open budget you can option this yacht up to $1.4 million!! But that is not the point of owning this kind of yacht.

What it is about is having a high level of comfort on the fastest yacht you can afford to buy.

Is that not what we all aspire to???

I would hazard a guess that John adheres to the 10% rule in that Jo De7 (their 7th NEW yacht,) represents no more than 10% of their nett wealth.

It doesn't go anywhere at less than 8 knots which makes it an entirely loveable yacht.

I could afford to buy one of these if I sold assets but I could not afford the upkeep so therefore I am not envious or jealous.

My little Lotus 9.2 does the job for me at 3 knots less speed.

Nice pics Cisco

nice pics cisco .............. powerful looking sail on the cat !!!!!!