Hamilton Island Race Week 2018

With the new catamaran ordered it was time to put the FOR SALE sign on Baruch and have one last Race Week Hurrah on her.

Baruch was located on Hamilton Island after we had spent some time in June cruising her up from the Gold Coast as a family.

We had a brand new carbon headsail to use for race week which I had purchased prior to the whole buying a cat thing came up. We had found that the Bavaria was very competitive in 15 knots plus but in less than 15 it was under canvased so we put a new forestay on and lowered the furler about 500mm which allowed us to make a bigger headsail which we also put some roach into using vertical battens.

The difference it made was amazing. Our approach this year was to just have fun and so we just had a relatively inexperienced crew on board with a focus on family and friends rather than sailing ability.

Ironically we did better than the last time we were there in 2015 - and we all had a ball.

We were super blessed to have my brother Anthony and his son, Cooper, able to fly in from NZ and join us for the week.

Baruch - three boats in from top

The magnificent Andrew “Chara” Charalambous - best crew ever!

A few of the team from Baruch

In lay day mode - Cid Harbour

Kalani joined us for most races and we discovered she was quite the photographer and also an excellent crew member. It was great to be racing with the family - kids, cousins, brother, Pa , wifey great friends Chara, John & Chris.

The whales were out in full force and incredibly we were blessed to see whales every day we raced - one incident had us waiting for the keel to go “bump” as th whale dove under our boat. They really are the most magnificent creatures.

Cuzzy bros!