Magic Marine Marblehead Worlds at Gouda, The Netherlands - Day 3
by UKMClass 10 Jul 2014 09:04 BST
5-11 July 2014
Day 3 of the Magic Marine Marblehead worlds in Holland © Hanneke Gillissen
The action at this year's Magic Marine Worlds in Gouda to an upward turn as predicted winds arrived to greet skippers on day 3. With heavy rain, winds were gusting in the region of 10 - 20 knots with the occasional harder bullet coming through.
On the race course our GBR skippers mostly continued to enjoy the fresher conditions throughout the day winning all 5 A fleet races on offer with them being shared between Graham Bantock and Brad Gibson. Other GBR skippers putting the favourable winds to use were Derek Priestly who managed a D,C,B,A fleet run, Darin Ballington looked at home in A fleet while Tony Guerrier and John Smith also managed first appearances in A fleet.
At the top of the leader board Brad Gibson has started to extended his lead over the fleet with consistent scores over the 13 full races sailed to date and holds a 16 point gap back to Graham Bantock, with Ante Kovacevic of Croatia a further 2 points behind in 3rd. Peter Stollery has worked hard to get himself up into 4th place with local skipper Joop de Jong NED in 5th.
For Day 4 we are predicting sunshine with the chance of thunderstorms, a maximum of 26 deg C and light winds below 7 knots. A rigs will be the order of the day and with only 2 days left, the top 5 looking to challenge Gibson for the title will be looking to make a charge.
To keep up to date with the event action and the progress of our 14 GBR skippers visit the 2014 Marblehead Worlds website and the UK Marblehead Class website.