Brian and Valerie Harrison

This intrepid couple sails out of Altona Yacht Club in sunny Melbourne, Victoria, on the waters of Port Phillip Bay.

Sailing History

We started out sailing in 1995 at Albury-Wodonga Yacht Club on the NSW/VIC border, sailing a mixture of off- the-beach monohulls and trailables the highlight being an old Aero 2 NS-14 boat called Feathertop. This was the first boat that we managed to get to plane on all points of sailing on a big day out on Lake Mokoan. Finally we settled on a 12’ skiff, spending more time under the water than on top of it. However when the boat was going well, it really went well. This came at the expense of still being sore from sailing when we would turn up for another episode of swimming lessons. This gave us the bug for having a boat with more sails then crew and when combined with our fond memories of the NS-14, the MG was a natural move for us. That’s when we moved to Toy Phase MG296 in 2003. However, being the short food enhanced people that we are, we wanted more grunt. This led us to drop a Sport skiff V19 rig on and have a go, using that bit more sail area to get us up and going. This made us almost unbeatable in light air, however being inland lake sailors we weren’t much chop when it started to blow.

In 2005 we moved to Melbourne, where it blows and through a mixture of our lack of wind skills, the slapping of the hull over large waves and general bickering we sold the boat in 2006. Over the next two years we sailed a Cobra Catamaran with a nice kite, having some success. This came at the expense of even more bickering and the decision to move back to an MG. So we drove up north again and bought Valhalla MG301. Predictably we wanted more grunt again, so we changed the rig again in mid 2009 to an MGB. After the 2010 Nationals we finally managed to get ourselves the bigger spinnaker. Finally we can plane downwind again, Woo Who!

Over the years, we have also owned and raced a number of trailable yachts, and we currently own a MacGregor 26M. Whilst this is a very slow sailing boat, it is by far the most comfortable, and if it ever gets boring we can always use the 50hp outboard motor and go do donuts!

Future

Since we have owned Valhalla, we have been slowing sneaking up on a faster boat. Our game-plan is to replace everything on the boat with good stuff and then buy a new hull to put under it all. So far we have got the MBG Main, Jib & Kite, carbon mast, boom, rudder, rudder box and tiller. So I think we are nearly there. Whilst we’ll never win a championship, never turn your back on us because we won’t be that far away!