Magic Marine Marblehead Worlds at Gouda, The Netherlands - Day 4
by UK M Class 11 Jul 2014 09:36 BST
5-11 July 2014
A tough day's racing!
The rain cleared to beautiful summer weather on Day 4 at the Magic Marine Marblehead Worlds in Gouda. The only element missing though was a consistent wind direction meaning a constant challenge to manage the course throughout the day.
Heats were raced in wind covering all points of the compass and it was a credit to the race management team that another 4 full races were completed over the day in tricky, yet fair light air racing conditions.
Day 4 is traditionally the day when those with an eye on the prize need to step forward and make a claim and so it was with Graham Bantock starting the day with a 1,2,3 to significantly close the gap on defending champion Brad Gibson. Gibson himself looked to struggle to find his rhythm of earlier in the week and started with a 2,4 and 14, taking a trip down to B fleet along with Peter Stollery. With the wind settling more from mid afternoon from the west, the question was whether Gibson and Stollery could bounce back to A fleet. After both making good starts they held a 1,2 with Gibson going on to win and gain promotion. Stollery was not so fortunate, meeting a port tacker up the 2nd beat only to see promotion slip away.
The good form then continued for Gibson with 1,1 placings in the final 2 A fleet heats of the day to once again open the points gap up on Bantock who scored a 9,2 to an overnight lead of 14 points after a nail biting finish in the final heat of the day.
Through the fleet there were some other fine performances, notably Darin Ballington who was as steady as a 'ROK' to register a day of A fleet placings and keep himself firmly within the top 10. Roy Stevens showed the way for an impressive all the way win in his C fleet heat to gain promotion to B. John Shorrock arrested his mid-week form slump with solid results to gain promotion from E back up to C fleet. Tony Guerrier also had a fine run of races to go from D to A.
Results after Day 4:
1st Brad Gibson, 30pts
2nd Graham Bantock, 44pts
3rd Ante Kovacevic, CRO, 62pts
4th Joop de Jong, NED, 88pts
5th Peter Stollery, 103pts
8th Darin Ballington
27th Tony Guerrier
28th John Smith
31st John Taylor
33rd Roy Stevens
34th Derek Priestley
36th John Shorrock
41st Roger Stollery
46th John Cleave
63rd Phil Holliday
65th Terry Rensch
Full scores and updates are on the Magic Marine Worlds website.
Follow all of the final days results and action on twitter and a full report will be posted here once the dust has settled.