NeilPryde UK Laser National Championship at Largs Sailing Club - Day 3
by UKLA 13 Aug 2014 09:03 BST
9-15 August 2014
The sun didn't shine on Largs today until racing was almost finished and the wind didn't blow quite as hard as yesterday so all fleets completed another two races in 'damp' conditions. The Race Team took all the fleets out into the main channel to the north of Gt. Cumbrae and they used both the inner and outer loops of the single trapezoidal course. The wind stayed at about 15 – 20kts at 260 degs for the whole time but started to fade as the last fleet was finishing
After the first General Recall by the Standards PRO Ken Falcon brought out the Black Flag for the rest of the day and there was a steady trickle of transgressors in all the rigs during the racing, including one hapless but unnamed 4.7 helm who managed a double black. Talking generally afterwards Ken remarked that in strong breeze conditions races are very rarely won on the start line and with virtually no tide during the first start sequence he was surprised at the number of boats caught OCS (& black flagged).
When the Standards did get away Alistair Goodwin improved his overall position by taking the first gun ahead of Finn Murphy (not Irish) with Ireland's Dougie Power 3rd ahead of Sam Whaley. Alistair couldn't repeat his success in the 2nd race slipping to 7th behind the winner Jack Aitken. Anthony Parke put behind him the disappointment of an earlier black flag to come 2nd with Dougie & Sam again filling the next two spots. Alistair, Jack, Sam & Dougie are very slowly putting a bit of daylight between themselves and the rest of the fleet but with six races still to go anything could and probably will happen. In the 4.7 fleet Arran Holman had a day to remember as he took the gun in both his races but even these good results leave him just 2 pts ahead of Nicole Hemeryck and 3 pts ahead of Alex King who traded 2nd & 3rd places today. Milo Gill-Taylor is hanging on in 4th place overall.
The Radial fleet are still in their qualifying series, final day tomorrow, and if anything the battle at the top of the leader board is intensifying. After today's racing none of the top ten boats are counting a score worse than 10th and the makeup of this group is five GBR boats, three Irish helms and two Israeli sailors, who co-incidentally are the top two Lady helms as well. In the Blue fleet Jon Emmett and Jamie Calder led the way and had identical score lines with a win & a 2nd apiece. They remain tied together on 7 pts. Tim Brow has been quietly accumulating 2nd & 3rd places on a regular basis and he added two 3rds to his card and is 6th overall.
In the Yellow fleet the 'unluckiest' helm was John Booth. In the first race he crossed the line first but found that he had been awarded a 20% place penalty for breaking SI 10.7 (Holding area violations) - see SIs on the event website - for the full explanation. Ryan Glynn (IRE) took 2nd with Oren Jacob (ISR) 3rd and another Irish helm Mark Bolger 4th. Oren then went on to complete a great day's racing by winning the afternoon race from John (Booth), Liam & Ryan (Glynn) in 2nd, 3rd & 4th respectively.
The Radials complete their Qualifying series tomorrow and are then split into Gold & Silver fleets for the final two days' racing. The Standards and Laser 4.7 fleets are scheduled to have two races per day until Friday evening. The UKLA is very grateful for the support it is receiving from the championship sponsors NeilPryde and Harken UK.
Full results for each fleet can be found on the event website.