Ordinarily you might expect a big bash after a major regatta. Especially one where there is a weigh-in before, and then another halfway through the main festivities. Yet on the eve of the super-well attended 2018 Etchells World Championship being staged out of the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron (RQ), this was a party that not only had to happen, it cemented do much about what this preeminent of sailing classes is all about. Namely superior competition on the water, and then marvellous camaraderie once back ashore. Now the reason for such a marker to be placed in the annals of history is that it is 50 years since Skip Etchells created the very vessel now so revered around the globe, and the one that attracts all manner of sailing superstars to her ranks. Yes. It was a birthday party fit for a milestone of this nature.