Re-cap by Hayden Barney

The 2024 VxOne Winter Nationals saw 21 teams hit the water at Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron for some highly competitive, shifty, and cold winters racing. The long weekend event (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) had interstate teams make the journey from Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club, Canberra Yacht Club and Royal Brighton Yacht Club in Victoria. It was great to see these teams travel to RQYS for the 9-race series. Each day provided extremely challenging conditions for tacticians to predict however the RQYS team ‘MackOne’ claimed the overall championships. The series saw five different race winners demonstrating the level of competition in this class. Sophie Whitmore was the 1^st female competitor on Peter Conde’s ‘LateShift’, and Greg Halls ‘VXexpress’ finished in 2^nd overall with the top 2 youth sailors represented at the event. Find out more on the VX One Australia Facebook page.

A wrap up from the team I raced with,

The Beast Sailing Team had a pretty good regatta as a full Barney team, Jordan, Ayla and I finished 6th in the overall standings. Our regatta score card was, (22), 7, 12, (12), 8, 8, 1, 6 & 6 with the brackets being our dropped races. In race 1, we were timed out due to a breeze shut down. We are super stoked to have come away with a heat win in race 7 during the regatta. *Unofficially* we were the 1st sibling/family team and Jordan was the top placing Youth helmsman. A great regatta and as always, a huge thanks to Michael James for getting The Beast Sailing Team on the water. Checkout the Beast Sailing Team on Facebook for more content.

Fantastic work from the RQYS Race committee and RQTV media team.

• Hayden Barney
• The Beast Sailing Team
• Squadron Member, Coach and Sailor