Portcheste​r Sailing Club Solo Season Championships - Round 2

Wednesday saw the second round of the Solo season championships at Portchester SC. In its second season, this year sees a revised format from last year, as it includes 5 high tide evening races as well as the usual trophy races during the year. This increased the number of races in the series to 14, with 8 to count. Sailed as part of the usual races, the Solo results are then extracted from the main fleet results and entered into the separate series

With a dropping, light force 2 wind and a fast incoming tide, this was always going to be a difficult race to judge, not just for the sailors but also for the race officer.

With the first leg being a tight fetch down the channel against the tide, the whole fleet opted to start close together on the castle side of the channel, with the loan exception of Alex Powell who gambled by starting on the far shore on his own. At the first mark and as the boats gybed on to the downwind leg the gamble had paid off and Powell found himself ahead of the pack of other Solos being led by light weather expert Bruce Humphries.

As the boats headed up on to the first beat at Tipner, Matt Humphries had squeezed ahead of his Dad to take second place. A good beat followed with some challenging decisions having to be made on how to tackle the tide. At the top mark it was the Solos of Powell and M Humphries who had picked the best route and had pulled out a gap to the rest of the fleet. The chasing pack were having a close battle being led by Chris Davies.

As the leading two boats approached the end of the lap, the race office had to make the difficult decision of whether a second lap could be completed before the dying wind switched off completely. As the first lap had only taken 30 minutes they decided to try and the fleet set off for lap 2.

It was also at this time that the chasing pack picked up a great patch of wind and came charging down (relatively) and picked up the back of the leading two boats. As the new group started back towards Basket, the battle between Flew, Kenchington and B Humphries resulted in them sailing each other into the tide and quickly lost touch again with the leaders, leaving a three horse race for the lead. Powell also forgot what had worked for him only a lap before and sailed too close the channel which allowed M Humphries to sail low in less current and slip past in to first place.

Things continued to look bleak for Powell as he lost another place to Davies on the following downwind leg. By this time the wind was dropping fast and as the boats turned up for the last beat it looked like a long drift back. Powell decided to gamble again and tacked off and managed to pick up the last bit of wind of the day and was able to carry the momentum to retake second place from Davies.

By the last leg the wind had completely gone and it was a long drift back (fortunately with the tide) to the finish. M Humphries picked up another well-deserved victory, giving him a clear lead in the series, with Powell coming in second and Davies third. Whilst the end of the race had frustrated some, all agreed in the bar afterward that it had been a fun and challenging race.

Series Results after Round 2: (2 out of 14 races)