RS600 Open and East Coast Piers Race at Marconi Sailing Club
by Lee Bratley 5 Jul 2017 14:22 BST
1-2 July 2017
Six RS600s headed East to attend the weekend's East Coast Piers Race and were rewarded with some great conditions across the two day event.
The 600 fleet had two closely fought races on Saturday on what was mainly a windy broad reaching downwind course and fetching up wind legs. Ian Montague won the first race with Michael Iszatt second and Richard Smith third. The second race saw Michael show some excellent downwind speed to take the win from Ian followed by Richard.
Sunday and the big one saw us wake with a few sore heads from the night before and a brisk NW wind. This meant we were in for a long reach out to the Bradwell and then Brightlingsea marks. The wind abated a little as we headed out but still gave us some fine conditions. Michael again showed some excellent downwind speed on what was something like a 12 mile reach! Despite the distances, the four leading 600's all rounded the Colne Point mark within about 200 yards of each other. With the wind backing westerly we were now into a huge beat to return. The wind generally stayed around force 3 to 4 dropping in some patches. Ian clawed back past Michael upwind with Richard and also Alistair Farman also passing him when he took a little swim.
Not until the the prize giving did we know the overall handicap results and I'm proud to say the 600s performed really well. Ian took the overall dinghy first on handicap beating a varied selection of Moths, RS800s and Musto Skiffs. With Richard in 5th, Alistair 6th and Michael 7th. This meant we had a very credible four 600s in the top seven overall.
Mention should also go to two new youngsters to the fleet, Luke Lazell and Jack Collis who both completed what was a testing huge course even though they have only had 600s a few months.
So extracting the 600 position, our overall results were for the three races:
1st Ian Montague, 4pts
2nd Michael Iszatt, 7pts
3rd Richard Smith, 8pts
4th Alistair Farman, 11pts
5th Luke Lazell
6th Jack Collis
So the next and final stop on our event calendar is the Inland Championship at Grafham on 2nd-3rd September.
Our aim is 20 plus boats to match last year's event and to send our official season out with a bang, so all of you 600 pilots out there should dig out your boats and harnesses in preparation and make this a date for your diaries.