Saturday- Spring Championship Day 1
The Spring Championship offers an intense schedule of four days’ racing, with no discards allowed. White Group includes classes for J/70 and J/80. Although the day dawned with the River Hamble resembling a millpond, everyone was pleased to see the wind fill in and racing got underway without delay.
White Group completed three good races between 40 and 50 minutes in length before the wind faded away and PRO Peter Knight called it a day amidst requests from competitors and race officers alike to enjoy a beer on the terrace in the sunshine. Information from ‘Bramble-Met’ confirmed this to be a good decision since there was a lull of well over an hour before any wind returned - too late for racing. In the J/70s North Sails (Ruairidh Scott) took two races and Boats.com (Ian Atkins) one.
Sunday- Spring Series Day 5, Spring Championship Day 2
The weather was bright and sunny with a forecast south-westerly breeze set to build from 10 to 17 knots during the day. The Black Group committee boat set up station near Universal buoy using courses with an initial windward leg to Williams Shipping or West Knoll buoy. The plan was to offer a longer race well over two hours to the Spring Series competitors followed by a short race for those boats entered in the Spring Championship only. The conditions offered the best sailing in the series so far, only a few sunbeams short of champagne sailing – the champagne instead being presented after racing. Smaller boats needed to choose carefully to find clear air avoiding the powerful IRC1 and IRC2 classes speeding downwind. Sundays in the Solent are also also busy with commercial traffic and the North Channel saw several shipping movements to avoid.
White Group enjoyed good sailing with a start near Meon. The moderate breeze remained fairly stable from the south-west necessitating only a single slight reorientation to the course to maintain good beats and runs. Racing took place on a small neap tide which may have led boats into a false sense of security. Several had to take penalties after misjudging the tide at the windward mark. North Sails went well in the J/70s followed by Spitfire (Team RAF Benevolent Fund) then Boats.com in each of the three races.
The J/70 class has seen the teams fluctuate on performance based on weather conditions. Nevertheless, showing greater consistency of late is Ruairidh Scott's NORTH SAILS team, leading both the Spring Championship as well as the Spring Series-- running the table with three straight 1sts on Sunday seemed to have helped their scoreline a wee bit. Bolting out of the blue on Saturday and maintaining the same performance on Sunday was Simon Ling's Royal Airforce Team sailing SPITFIRE, taking six 2nds over the two days! In third for the Spring Champs is Ian Atkins' BOATS.COM with lots of 3rds and is hanging onto second in the Spring Series just one point back from NORTH SAILS. Sailing photo credits- Iain McLuckie For more Warsash Spring Series sailing information
|
