Turn one at Wyndham Harbour. Two Supercat 600 race boats, one corner - The Sting and Doug Wright's Shifty Cat, and an impact hard enough to cause compression shear through the composite structure of The Sting's X-Cat top deck.

Both carbon fibre skins were fractured. The internal composite core was damaged along the original shear line of the deck. And there were three weeks to get it back on the water for Round 3 at Geelong.

This was never going to be a cosmetic fix. The damaged area was carefully opened and assessed before any work began. Both carbon skins were structurally repaired, the damaged core was removed and replaced, and the original deck profile was faired back to shape. Vacuum bagging and controlled post-curing were used throughout to ensure the repair could handle the demands of offshore racing.

The Sting made Round 3.