Four boats fought it out in the final race for outright victory to claim the Australian Marblehead Class championship at Yarrawonga, VIC.
At the end of three days of sailing it all came down the last race of the championship to determine the 2020 Australian Marblehead Class champion.
After starting the day the way he ended day two, Sean Wallis came out of the blocks fast and picked up wins in races 13 & 14 and moved from fourth overnight to the top of the leaderboard passing Kirwan Robb, Scott Fleming and Lincoln McDowall.
The start of race 15 saw Wallis get another good start and he looked to be unstoppable until finding weed mid way up the first work and while making a quick dash to the shore the charge for the championship title seemed to be over as he rounded the windward mark last while the trio of Robb, Fleming and McDowall had all started strongly and led the fleet around the course.
It was a left hand shift up the second windward leg that saw Wallis move through the fleet to re-join the leaders at the top mark the second time and as positions changed up the final leg to the finish it was Fleming that made the best of it finishing first ahead of Robb with McDowall third and Wallis fourth setting up a fantastic final race for the championship.
As the breeze slowly died it starting looking doubtful as to whether the sixteenth race would actually get started and after some waiting a slight breeze filled providing just enough for racing to resume.
Racing was extremely close with Wallis reaching the first mark just ahead of the three but needed to ensure that Fleming was placed at least two places between him. The second work saw Scott Condie sneak through to lead ahead of Wallis with McDowall and Fleming fighting it out for third. It was at that point tragedy struck for Fleming who picked up some weed and slipped well back in the fleet and ended his title aspirations and with Robb also slipping back through the fleet the title challenge was left between Wallis and McDowall. In the mean time Wallis had claimed the lead back from Condie to lead the final windward mark rounding.
The final run and windward leg were challenging with little to no breeze and the fleet wallowing but eventually enough pressure came for the fleet to finish with Sean Wallis sailing his Grunge finishing his day with 1, 1, 4, 1 and the championship title on 41pts with Lincoln McDowall second overall (46pts) and Scott Fleming third (48pts).
Pictured: Ray Joyce (Master), David 'Yoda' Thomas (Grand Master), Lincoln McDowall (2nd), Sean Wallis (1st), Scott Fleming (3rd)