After two and a half hours close racing, during which the shifts and an increasing ebb tide made reading the beat critical, positions changed quite a bit, and at the finish three boats crossed the line in ten seconds, with the corrected times giving a gap of only 14 seconds between first and second boat (but still ten seconds more than last week!) My photo shows 'Draig O'r Mor' leading 'Excalibur' over the line - 'Wildfire' was approaching over my left shoulder on starboard to give three bows on the line at once, which says all you need to know about how keenly raced this series is, and the Winter series which follows it. Corrected time gave 'Excalibur' the win with 'Draig O'r Mor' second and 'Foxed2' third.
Equally close racing in the PY fleet meant that Ricky Bruton in 'Effusion' just beat Steve Dadd's 'Rumrunner' to first place; Ricky's rapid recovery from a premature start put him in the right place on the first beat, while Steve Dadd chased the lifts out to the right. Both boats were sailed hard downwind, with Steve having to cope with a private brisk northerly shift on the spinnaker reach back across the bay the second time, which made getting to X quite hard work. 'Crewcut', 'Echo', 'Circe' and 'La Salmo' sailed as hard as possible to stay in the race; it is good to see YCW members supporting these events, which have the reputation for being the most consistently exciting keelboat racing in Weymouth.
See you on the water next week!
Steve Fraser
Submitted on 15th October 2012