After leading by nearly two minutes at the final windward mark, Gotta Love It 7 cruised home to defeat Thurlow Fisher Lawyers (Michael Coxon, Aaron Links and Trent Barnabas) by 1m19s.
Appliancesonline.com.au (Micah Lane, Paul Montague and Tom Anderson) was a further 2m3s back in third place.
Top international boat today was C-Tech (Alex Vallings) which came home fourth, ahead of Mojo Wine (Archie Massey) and Rag & Famish Hotel (Jack Macartney).
Gotta Love It 7 heads the points table on 2 points, followed by Mojo Wine and Appliancesonline.com.au on 7, Rag & Famish Hotel on 9, Thurlow Fisher Lawyers on 11 and Smeg (Nick Press) on 15.
All teams carried their big rigs in the 10-15 knot North East breeze.
Gotta Love It 7 was soon in front and it wasn’t too long before the champion crew had their skiff powering away from the rest of the fleet.
Thurlow Fisher Lawyers and Rag & Famish Hotel trailed ‘7’ at the Beashel Buoy with De’Longhi-Rabbitohs (Simon Nearn) and C-Tech leading a tightly bunched fleet behind the leading group.
Rag & Famish had some gear problems on the spinnaker run past the wing mark at Shark Island to the bottom mark at Clarke Island and dropped back to seventh on the second work to the Beashel Buoy.
Gotta Love It 7 had already extended her lead to more than one minute while Thurlow Fisher Lawyers was holding a comfortable second position.
Most spectator interest centred on the battle for third place and once again it was tight with Mojo, C-Tech, Appliancesonline, Kenwood-Rabbitohs (Brett Van Munster) and Rag & Famish Hotel most in contention.
Two great battles developed over the final lap of the course.
Appliancesonline and C-Tech raced head-to-head for third and fourth placings while Mojo Wine and Rag & Famish Hotel did the same for fifth and sixth.
John Winning’s horror start to the regatta in Yandoo continued today when the Yandoo team were forced to retire after a collision with another competitor.
Today’s incident is subject to protest and follows a pre race centerboard problem which saw Yandoo miss her start by three minutes yesterday.
Ironically, both incident occurred less than 100 metres apart.