The Australian taipan nationals are currently being held at Port Stephens, on the central NSW coast. Coverage is at www.taipan.asn.au, if interested. Entries are a bit down on when the event was last held at the same venue 4 years ago, but still reasonable at 52 across the 3 fleets. A bunch of Capricorns (defacto taipan F18) are racing with the 5.7's. No doubt the high cost of fuel put off a few guys from making the trip.

The 22 boat cat fleet looks pretty hot. Interestingly, the main battle is with one of the newest boats (>AUS300) against one of the oldest wooden T's (AUS005).

Phil

The Australian Taipan nationals + Capricorn f18 have been finished.

Full results can be investigated at :

http://www.taipan.asn.au/ (and click on "2006 nationals" in the menubar)

A few highlights.

22 Cat rigged Taipan 4.9's (singlehanding)
19 Sloop rigged Taipans 4.9's (Doublehanded)
7 Capricorn F18's
5 Taipan 5.7's


Once again the oldies are doing very well.

In the cat rigged fleet the battle was head on between an extremely new glass (or kevlar) AUS326 and the very old timber epoxy Aus005. The last boat must be over 15 years of age (it is probably 17 years old); it finally ended on teh 2nd spot behind Aus326. This is one thumbs of for old and even homebuild boats !


In the sloop rigged fleet we have :

Aus051 (about 1993 ?) and Aus035 (even older) battling it out with Aus166 Aus180 and Aus080 making up the rest of the top 5.

If you look at the result you can see that all the top 3's are close in overall points. There was some good racing at the 2006 taipan Nationals.

Wouter