Hamble River Wednesday Night Series - Early Bird Race
by Lis Robinson 9 Apr 2015 17:12 BST
8 April 2015
The 2015 Hamble River Wednesday Night Series kicked off last night following unprecedented cancellation last week of race 1 due to technical problems. To mark the event the Commodore supplied Implacable as committee boat and the fleet set out on a lovely evening with some 6 knots of SE breeze. With a good turnout for the Early Bird series numbers were swelled by new arrivals included Applejack (Craig Cossar and Natalie Gray) and Uproar, an Impala transplant from Poole.
To get the fleet back before dark, Race Officer Mike Dellar sent the fleet from Bald Head on two laps to Stormforce Coaching with a kite run down to Hamble Point with the smaller boats beating up to Coronation for the second lap. Impalas led the fleet into the first leeward rounding although not without their share of mishaps. Barney Smith was clearly distracted by his all female crew on Imptish and managed to coax his driver into the start just after the preparatory was removed for the subsequent class start. Cheeky Monkey (Aidan Barr) had a far more traumatic start to the season when their prop dropped off coming down the Hamble before the start.
Applejack, helmed by Vicky McPherson, gave Forethought of Gosport (Mike James) a clear head start but pulled back to take Class 3 in both Club Class and NHC. In the Impala fleet Polly (Meakins and Cudmore) retained a clear lead from the windward mark throughout the race to take the Impala fleet and Class 2 under NHC but lost under Club Class by a mere 7 seconds to Needlework (Patrick Pymm and Peter Smith). Too Frank (Sam Flint & Olly Love) took 2nd in the Impala fleet and a consistent 3rd in Club Class and NHC. Imptish, 3rd in the Impala class, pipped Too Frank to take second in Club Class but swapped with Too Frank to take 4th in NHC.
In Class 1 La Nef, (John Noe) won both Club Class and NHC whilst Midnight Cowboy, (Steph Merry), beat Wee Bear, (Chudziak, Horner & Malas), by over a minute on Club class but lost out by nearly two minutes to reverse positions under NHC.
The clubhouse was busy after racing as competitors caught up with each other for the first time Club racing in 2015 and dissected the results over an excellent supper dished up by Phillippa Pountain and Chris Exton.
Racing continues next week and is free for all members of Hamble River Sailing Club with membership costing less than many series entry fees. New members are welcome to come and try out an evening race for free and details of the full activities, training courses and events of the Club are on the Hamble River SC website.