The king has been dethroned (in one of his minor provinces) by his little brother.

Les Thorpe has won the 2002 states sailed as part of the YANSW Sail Sydney regatta. Mark Thorpe and Chris Dey won races but Les was just more consistent. All three now have the new Truflow version of Mark's Choshi sail and there is very little in boat speed difference.

Rohan Veal from Melbourne was 4th, who sailed Corporate Criminal Inc with the monofilm KA sail he used on his old boat at the nationals. Rohan lead out in virtually every race, but seemed to do a little too much swimming on the square runs to bring home a win.

Our fleet of 19 made us the biggest class at the Georges River / Botany Bay regatta. It is nice to out-number the Lasers for once. The wind varied from 12 kts on Friday, 30 on Saturday when fortunately the starter could not get the anchor to hold, and we did not actually get on the water, to finally 15 knots or so on Sunday when we did a marathon 4 races straight. Some Mothies spent a good 5 hrs straight on the water.

The windward leeward courses set for the other fleets were a bit boring, but we coped and at least presented ourselves as a viable class of competent sailors. For the last 3 races we shared the course with the 49ers and 29ers and were at least visible to the most high performance of international classes. Some of the high profile 49er sailors have already been in contact with Rohan expressing interest in our moths.

Judging by the latest recruits it takes us about two years from when the seed is planted until they actually get around to buying a moth, so hopefully we will see more fruits of our efforts in a couple of years time.

Some interesting stories included in the 3rd race on Sunday, Shane Hollis broke his vang on a gybe, lashed it up and then retired for the day. On the way back to the club he came across a kite surfer clinging to a channel marker (in strong tide), he had no wetsuit on and seemed to be unable to sail. Shane was about to attempt to tow him to shore when one of the rescue boats arrived (with Bob Ross onboard too). The rescue boat then took him to the shore. Shane said he didn't know how successful the towing would have been as the board was a sinker and his kite sail was difficult to manage. If no one came along to rescue him, the wind and tide would have dragged him to the other side of Botany Bay and he was a definite candidate for hypothermia. Stay tuned for the new TV show "Moth Watch" - modelled on the (in)famous Bay Watch, and starring the muscle men of the Moth class who have been asked to wear nothing more than monofilm speedos just for the ladies.

Another interesting point to mention was the rather unusal Moth flag flapping in the strong 30 knots and underneath code flag N on the Saturday when racing was cancelled for the day. It looked almost identical to a female's (or a disturbed male's) white blouse that had the sleeves, legs and front cut out of it, and most importantly a big moth logo stuck on it. Chris Dey then later had to argue with the Salvos that the blouse was more needed as a moth flag for our states, than to keep a homeless person warm in bed at night.

See the YA web site for the full results.