Blithfield Barrel Round 4 concludes the series

Blithfield Barrel Round 4 © Don Stokes

Blithfield Barrel Round 4 © Don Stokes

The final round on the 2016 Barrel series took place on Sunday. A cold, but pleasant breeze was forecast and that's exactly what we arrived to on Sunday morning. It looked like the series was going to get the climax we were hoping for!

Race 1 got underway in a stiff and freezing force 4. A large shift prior to the first start heavily favoured the port end and that's exactly where the leaders at the windward mark came in from. The swing to the east stayed as it was for much of the race making the timing of your tacks onto starboard critical.

The race was won by Tom Pygall's Merlin, helmed by Rich Adams. Nick Craig and Charlie Chandler came in second in another Merlin and Matt Biggs and John Hackett came in third - a good result for them, but this wasn't going to cut it as Andy Davies and Alex Warren wrapped one hand on the Barrel from 5th place. The first boat from the slow start was Mike Gibson in 6th place in his Supernova

Though the wind had dropped off towards the first race it was back in tome for the second which started in an if anything more freezing force 3-4 from the north. Once again the gods sitting on the east side decided to have some fun with us and another swing to the right about 2 minutes before the start heavily favoured the port end.

Once again that's where the leaders at the first mark had come in from, and once again things stayed like this for over half of the race, though the breeze made the slightly one sided beats interesting with some quite strong gusts and large shifts.

The slower boats did better in this race, but the series leaders made certain of their overall win by taking the bullet in this race. Rumour has it that Taxi was seen force feeding Alex Warren several of Jayne Tatton's pies over lunch! Second was Mike Gibson in his Supernova, with Matt and John again in third place.

So overall that left Andy Davies and Alex Warren as our Barrel champions for 2016. Matt Biggs and John Hackett came in second and Rich Adams and Tom Pygall come in third despite having no discards having missed the first round!

Blithfield Barrel Round 4 - photo © Don Stokes

Thanks to Steve Hendon and his team for their excellent job in trying conditions in the committee boat. Thanks also to the bar and galley volunteers, safety boat drivers and everyone from the club and elsewhere who have helped us to run the series.

Also a big thanks to all the visitors for coming and saying with us - we hope to see you all again next year.

For further details please visit the club website www.blithfield.org.uk

Overall Results (provisional):