Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore 24/25

News
2023
Spring Fever

Spring Fever

NEWS
22 Sep, 2023 11:28:00 AM

SAILING - Noakes Sydney to Gold Coast 2023 29/07/2023 Ph. Andrea Francolini Highly Sprung Protected by copyright

Spring Fever

Mark Spring with a newly acquired boat, loves to race with his top crew. “We’re hanging out the for the Flinders Islet Race because it’s been almost a month - waiting for the boat to get back from Hamo and so forth,” says Mark. “We’re excited, we have a really good crew and we are really pumped up for it.”

Since acquiring Highly Sprung, Mark has done 2018 Hamilton Island Race Week on a Beneteau First 45, finishing top ten in IRC. Then in December 2019, he took the triple IRC/ORCi/PHS crowns in the Pittwater to Paradise, assisted by his boat captain ‘Banker’ Pearson in the same boat.

Having done two Hobarts and having had a great race in the new 52 at the 2023 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race in July, he’s been waiting patiently to get back on Highly Sprung.

Ahead of the second race in Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore we caught up with Mark to hear how to boat and crew were both looking.

"Boat Captain James Turner and Campbell Geeves have done a fantastic job of recruiting a large part of the team to give us a well-rounded crew that is mixture of good mates and serious professionals. We’re happy to have the Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore now leading up to Hobart. We are a reasonably new crew, who have been sailing together for about a year – so we are just starting to get used to each other,” Mark explains.

With a light sou'easterly forecast building to 20knots, the 88NM is looking a little low on breeze, but Mark is still sounding optimistic.

“I mean you have to be careful what you wish for, but we were hoping for a slightly stiffer breeze to get us all training and working, in the kind of environment that we can expect for Hobart…. But it isn’t looking that way at this stage.”

Mark says they have a great crew of 14 or 15 for the Flinders Islet Race, including two fantastic women sailors Clare Costanzo and Jessica Angus. The crew is skilled to the ears and the boat is well prepped.

“We have got Sam Newton and Clint Evans from All Marine looking after her for us and they are totally genius, so we are pretty lucky. We have the best of the best."

"We also have Matt Myall onboard for this race, who is one of the up and coming legends of the sport," says Mark.

When it comes to Mark’s expectation for the rest of the Pointscore he dares not get ahead of himself. He intimates that having expectations can be overrated. “We expect if we go out there, we have a good chance of staying with the fleet, let’s put it that way. We are realistic about where we are a in our progress.”