Black Jack fast but not fast enough

Peter Harburg’s Black Jack narrowly missed their chance to rewrite the Brisbane to Gladstone Race record when she sailed to a runaway line honours win earlier today.

The power sailing 20m maxi chaser brilliantly sailed by skipper Mark Bradford and a dedicated crew who were committed to a high workload of sail changes only to have their effort hampered by unfavourable winds on the final 85 miles to eventually miss the record by 1 hour 27 minutes 33 seconds.

Owner Peter Harburg openly accepted that the record chance started to fall apart when they approached Lady Elliot Island after sailing the first half of the race above record pace.

“There were times that Black Jack surfed along in the pitch dark of night at speed in excess of 22 knots only to miss our chance with unfavourable winds at a critical time in the race but we are happy with the result”.

“We beat our 2009 time by almost 15 minutes thanks to a super human effort by the crew who endured a huge workload of sail changes to place the record under threat until it fell apart”.

“Black Jack is coming back and maybe 2011 could be our year”. A happy Mark Bradford said.