The Marlay Point Overnight Race (MPONR) has been running on the Gippsland Lakes since 1969. It is the only overnight race for trailer sailors in Australia and has earned the reputation as the Sydney to Hobart for smaller yachts.
Hosted by the Lake Wellington Yacht Club, in conjunction with Gippsland Lakes Yacht Club, this iconic race runs on the Victorian Labour Day in March every year. Starting at sunset, competitors sail across Lake Wellington, through the McLennan Straits into Lake Victoria for the run home to Paynesville. Bigger boats finish the race after rounding Raymond Island via the MacMillan Straits.
Regarded as Australia’s premier race for trailable yachts and multi-hulls, about 4,000 boats and 11,000 sailors have been involved in the race’s 50 years, making the Overnight Race a must do on every trailer sailors bucket list.
Following a concerted and consistent marketing strategy to encourage people to celebrate the 50th anniversary, 229 trailer sailors, multihulls, sports boats and classic yachts from all over Australia descended on the tiny Lake Wellington Yacht Club for this year’s big event. The celebrations included a gala dinner the evening before the race where many tall tales, some of them probably based on some level of truth, however small, were told, plus a well attended Family Fun Day on the day of the event.
The annual competition about who had travelled the furthest to be in the race was won this year by someone who had come over from Ireland to compete. My photo of me wearing my 2017 MPONR shirt outside the Roman Coliseum was sadly beaten in the Where Has Your Marlay Point Shirt Been? competition but I am willing to try again next year…
Ultimate Trailable Yacht ‘Inspiration’ brought the A Team again to this year’s race. Ultimate Yacht Association President and Racing Captain, Andrew Mackenzie, has lost count of how many MPONRs he has competed in. Fore deckie Don has done 16, navigator Tracey has now done her 15th and Don’s son Harry returned this year for his second time. We are, of course, relative newcomers to the race – some people have done every single race.
With so many competitors this year, the race management team conducted three staggered starts, when previous years all divisions have started together. The news that the wind would be coming from the east for most of the night was met with some disappointment given that boats would likely have to beat into the wind in a hard slog to get across the first lake – and trailables like to fly their kites whenever possible.
The first division to start left at 1945 and the last left at 2005. Once the race starts, twilight descends quickly, the stars come out and night falls. You have to watch out very carefully for those dreaded Stealth Boats that do not have their nav lights on – they tend to approach silently and quickly in the dark, then disappear again to haunt some other team.
The race itself is different each year – and this is part of what makes it so enjoyable. One of the highlights for me this time was how there were so many people on the banks watching the race through the night. They said that the sight of so many yachts coming across Lake Wellington to Plover Point at the start of the McLennan Straits was beautiful to see.
After finding and keeping to the thalweg in the Straits again this year, we managed to not hit Australia. With no wind at times, and a current that always seems to go in the opposite direction to the one you want to go in, we had a lot of sympathy for those boats that made landfall, or sailed backwards slowly into other boats.
It’s only when dawn starts that you can get a sense of where you are compared with other boats. This year we found ourselves towards the front of the fleet and spent some time taking photos of the boats behind us – because they looked so good with their spinnakers up in the dawn light, of course!!
There were nine Ultimates in this year’s race. It may come as no surprise that, despite being a very close and friendly group, when Ultimates are racing against each other, it can get competitive on the water, particularly at a Marlay Point!
At 0830 we thought we would be finished by about 1000 but… We came to a stop a few times in some significant holes in the wind after we passed the second last point in the race. We even found ourselves going backwards a couple of times – with the sails still up and flying. There’s no way to put the anchor down in most of Lake Victoria, which has depths of more than 18 metres in sections.
At 1030 we found that all of those boats we previously thought were so pretty with their spinnakers up well in the back of the fleet, were suddenly on top of us. It was like we had been stopped at a set of traffic lights and peak hour had arrived. My favourite part of this year’s MPONR was the battle across to the finish line from the edge of Raymond Island, with thirty or more boats all going for the line.
We found out later that the results program had a small melt down because of so many boats at the finish line at once. The time elapsed for the results to come out ended up being almost as long as the race! After 13 long hours the provisional results were made available: https://mponr.com/archives/2018-2/
The first boat through to Paynesville got there at 0623. Roger Crabtree on David Heale’s Ultimate 23 ‘Anaconda’ missed most of the action in the big crush at the end because they finished twenty or more minutes before those of us who bunched up at Point Turner! Congrats to the Heales and Roger with an elapsed time of 15 hours six minutes and 39 seconds!
Inspiration finished with an elapsed time of 15 hours 26 minutes and 16 seconds. And we are already looking forward to next year’s 51st MPONR!
Video of the boats coming across Lake Wellington into Plover Point
Last Modified on 15/03/2018 16:43