2012 Rowsell Sails Merlin Rocket Travellers Series Week 2
The 2012 Rowsell Sails Merlin Rocket Travellers Series entered its second week at Tamesis Club with a strong turn-out of fifteen boats duking it out on a beautiful winter morning. The sun shone brightly, the stream was negligible and, in the second race in particular, the south-easterly wind was made for tight racing.
Series Race 3
With the usual array of goodies from Rowsell Sails available to the top-placed crews, four boats set their alarm clocks early and made it out for the first race of the day. Commodore John Adams set a relatively short course with a dogleg in front of the clubhouse. With a fairly fitful Force 2, it wasn’t perhaps the most exciting racing ever seen but two distinct battles broke out with Mike Stephens fending off Matt Peregrine-Jones to take first and Ken Duffell getting away from Chris Balmbro to take third. It was only Mike’s crew’s second time in a boat so Mike had clearly managed to teach Judy which bit of string was which pretty quickly.
Race 3 Results:
1st Mike Stephens & Di Fu (Judy) – Flinkidink (1097) 2nd Matt Peregrine-Jones & Dana Church – Masquerade (995) 3rd Ken Duffell & Brian Corking – Harry (3599) 4th Chris & Suzy Balmbro – Bad Company (3062)
Series Race 4
The longer format race was contested by fifteen boats and the wind filled to a Force 3 with gusts up to Force 4. After a congested start a simple upstream/downstream sausage took the fleet up to a mark set downstream of Stephens Ait and then to the Lensbury Mark towards the downstream end of Trowlock Island. The top four places were particularly hard-fought with David Vines eventually overcoming Andy Harris to take the win. Throughout the fleet there were constant place changes and tussles over the hour-long race.
The Rowsell Sails Tamesis Merlin Rocket Travellers Series runs until the end of February and results are counted from both the 10:30 and 11:15 races each Sunday. This year, Rowsell Sails are also sponsoring the entire Tamesis Merlin Rocket Winter Series (October to March).
Week 1 of the series had seen Mike Stephens & Matt Peregrine-Jones take a bullet each, so it’s Mike and Matt making the early running in the Rowsell Sails Travellers Series at present.
Race 4 Results:
1st David Vines & Fran Gifford – Elusive (3347) 2nd Andy Harris and Caroline Croft – Shenandoah (3088) 3rd Jon Redding & Augusta Redding – Pikey (3520) 4th Mike Stephens & Di Fu (Judy) – Flinkidink (1097) 5th Matt Peregrine-Jones & Dana Church – Masquerade (995)