GOOD NEWS FROM BRISBANE:
With the Christmas festivities all finished, normal business activity was starting again out in Queensland, before shutting back down again for the New Year. This was bad news for the Team GBR Contenders, who still had not been reunited with their boats and gear. With the first race of the Australian Nationals, the feeder event for the 40th World Championships, now just days away, the British sailors were really looking at the event kicking off without them.
Plan B, to try to locate some spare boats that could be chartered, was kicked off and some available Contenders identified, but the killer was the huge distances involved. From here in Brisbane, Auckland in New Zealand is closer than Perth ‘just down the road’ in Western Australia!
Then, at the 11th hour, all the pressure that had been placed on the shippers finally paid off, with word reaching the sailors that at last the container had been moved off the quayside. It was now held up in Quarantine Control where all 11 boats would have to be unpacked, inspected, then either reloaded or moved down to the club by other means.
The GBR Contenders, with masts, sails, foils and all spare gear unloaded from the container and into quarantine. The boats were destined not to be there long. Picture courtesy J. Hone.
Enter the hero of the hour, a local logistics company, Dionysius Transport, led by MD Bevan Dionysius. Bevan’s team swung into action and with flat bed lorries, some amazing goodwill and a huge amount of hard work, got the boats cleared, loaded and delivered to the host club by late in the afternoon. Thanks to these sterling efforts, the UK sailors can now rig their boats and start getting some much needed time in out on the waters of Moreton Bay.
Just a few hours after they had been unpacked into quarantine, a joint effort between the fired up GBR sailors and the fully committed team from Dionysius Transport, saw the boats arrive on the Rigging Lawn at the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron.
With good news at last, the British contingent are now able to relax and fully join in the celebrations tonight to not only see in the New Year, but also to help kick start what has all the makings of a classic World Championship event.
Pick up the Twitter feed from ….
http://twitter.com/2010contenders
David Henshall
Bearfacemedia/ Brisbane