Back 2 Black wins Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race
by Cruising Yacht Club of Australia 29 Jul 05:52 UTC
25 July 2026
Sean Langman's Back 2 Black has won the IRC Overall crown in the 384 nautical mile 2026 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race.
"This has to be the warmest edition of the race, and I don't remember a race where the night was so warm and the day was so glorious," Langman said.
"A glorious finish, sunshine, running conditions, what more can you ask for."
Back 2 Black didn't have it easy early.
"We had a tough day the first day, we didn't seem to be able to get out of our own way, sitting last for a while," Langman said.
But the GP42 proved well suited to holding its own against boats ten feet longer and the double-handers.
"These boats are pretty light, they change gears well, and downwind, they hold their time."
Langman was generous with credit: to Belinda Tayler for her first go at navigational duties, to the father-son Braidwood team including young Eamon on his first overnight race, to long-suffering crewmate Josh Alexander, and to the shore team. He closed with a tribute to his late father, who called Southport his home, dedicating the win to him with three cheers for Back 2 Black.
Disko Trooper backed up a remarkable race with second overall on IRC, on top of sweeping IRC Div 3, Corinthian IRC, Corinthian PHS, Double-Handed IRC and Double-Handed PHS, a clean sweep of nearly every category this race boasts.
It nearly came unstuck five hours from the finish. Chasing down Back 2 Black, co-skippers Jules Hall and Alex Knight had a wave catch the boat while trimming, tangling the mainsheet around the tiller, making the boat round-up and wrapping the spinnaker tightly around the forestay three or four times.
"The first thing that goes through your mind is, we're so close to the finishing line, we've done really well, and we're about to chuck the whole thing in the bin," Hall said.
The focus shifted instantly from chasing the leader to simply holding on to second. "No shouting, no finger-pointing, just deal with it," Halls affirmed.
"You can't go offshore and be highly competitive, pushing the limits, and not have something go wrong. You just have to get on with it."
Beyond that late scare, the pair described conditions that lived up to the billing: "Absolute champagne sailing, bright moon, whales, dolphins, it was absolutely spectacular."
Chris and Lockie Dare's Ambition rounded out the Overall podium in third, a result that capped a season built around getting to know a new boat.
"It's great to race against Sean and his team," Chris Dare said of the battle with Back 2 Black.
"It was super tight racing. They managed to get away off the coast, and at one point it was just hard to peg them back from then."
Dare put Ambition's ability to hang with boats ten feet longer down to a mix of design and crew work: "The boats are quite well suited to hanging on to the 52s in reaching and running conditions below fifteen knots, which we saw a lot of. At times we felt we were equally as quick as them."
Line Honours
Earlier, Smuggler took Line Honours on Monday morning, but her win nearly didn't eventuate.
Skipper Tim Davis and tactician Steve McConaghy had planned to sail outside the fleet from the start, a call that delivered them a victory on the same track last year. This time it backfired almost immediately.
"The fleet came out the Heads probably a hundred metres outside us, and that's all they needed to get a huge jump on us," Davis said.
"Before we knew it, we'd basically dropped seven miles behind on our main competitors, so we had a lot of work to do on the first night."
That work paid off. "We turned that deficit on the TPs into a fifteen-to-twenty-mile lead," Davis said, though holding the lead once they had it brought its own problem: no canary in a coal mine.
"Being the lead boat, and this is the first time we were in that position, you don't have anyone else to follow as a good indicator, so we found a lot of the holes on the course."
For McConaghy, the win carries extra weight.
"I've been trying for nearly 40 years, to win this on Line Honours, and finally got there," he said.
McConaghy was blunt about what made this crew capable of pulling off the comeback: "We did a lot of sail changes, and they all went smoothly. If you can get through a tricky race like this and do that smoothly, that's where the gains are made."
The pair also gave credit to a largely settled core crew over the past three to four years, and to first-time NSGCYR sailor Adam Minoprio, who went one from one on his debut.
Between a Line Honours winner who had waited nearly 40 years for this result, a sponsor's own boat taking the overall trophy, and a Double-Hander sweeping most racing categories, this year's Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race delivered exactly the kind of racing this event is known for.
Next up in the Audi Centre Sydney Blue Water Pointscore is the 88nm Flinders Islet Race on Saturday 26 September. The fleet heads south to Flinders Islet, about one nautical mile east of Port Kembla Harbour, Wollongong, before returning to Sydney Harbour.
The six event Blue Water Pointscore culminates in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, starting on Boxing Day.
Overall Results:
IRC: (1) Back 2 Black, (2) Disko Trooper (DH), (3) Ambition
IRC Div 0: (1) Smuggler, (2) Koa, (3) Gusto
IRC Div 1: (1) Back 2 Black, (2) Ambition, (3) Minerva
IRC Div 2: (1) KD1, (2) Kanreki, (3) Mistral (DH)
IRC Div 3: (1) Disko Trooper (DH), (2) Supernova, (3) Saltwater Wine
PHS: (1) Tribeca Wild Thing, (2) Troubadour, (3) Mako
Corinthian IRC: (1) Disko Trooper, (2) Kanreki, (3) Koa
Corinthian PHS: (1) Disko Trooper (DH), (2) Kanreki, (3) Ragtime
Double-Handed IRC: (1) Disko Trooper, (2) Mistral, (3) Blue Planet
Double-Handed PHS: (1) Disko Trooper, (2) Employment Hero Alliance, (3) Veloce
Line Honours: (1) Smuggler, (2) Koa, (3) Gusto
Full results can be found here.