Merlin Rocket National Champs at Looe Sailing Club - Day 4

The night before had seen the superheroes and cartoon characters fancy dress party and a disco which had a midnight curfew. There were hotly contested prizes for the kids and the adults, with the children’s winners being the Winder lads, the adult's being Toby Lewis dressed as Mr Tickle. Others worth mentioning were the Taylor/Blake team effort of “The Utensils” mimicking The Incredibles, Lawrence Tosh as Shrek and his crew Alex Jones dressed as Princess Fiona. This was followed by Tuesday’s prizegiving and the raffle to win a Rowsell jib which was won by Anna Burton. The party carried on till midnight and involved a mosh pit and destruction of many fancy dress costumes!

Day 4 saw 2 races under grey skies, with rain showers. Wind 220 degrees, 16 - 20 knots.

Race 1 was a reverse Olympic course, delayed when the pin end boat got the warp wrapped round the propeller, followed by two postponed sequences. The pin end of the line favoured; the leaders at windward mark all came from the left, lead by 'Tricky Dicky' (Richard Whitworth) & Sally Townend, followed by Tudor Owen & Hamish Kilburn who were declared OCS, leaving Andy Davis & Ellie Bremer in 2nd place which they held to the finish. It took Roger Gilbert & James Stewart some time to climb to the third after having one of their rare shaggy first beats. There was plenty of capsizing all down the fleet as a series of squalls came down the race course. The race was much shorter than previous days - 3 rounds with a short beat to the finish - Whitworth took the gun after 45 mins.

Race 2 was sailed back to back, also reverse Olympic with 4 rounds and a long beat to finish, with no obvious bias on the start line. The course was shorter and it was easy to overstand the windward mark, catching out several normally reliable contenders. Gilbert & Stewart arrived at the same time as John Bell & Graham Williamson, and snuck an inside berth before sailing clear to win. Bell & Williamson had a race-long tussle with Tom Stewart & Liam Dempsey before bagging 2nd, leaving Stewart & Dempsey to fight off Davis & Bremer. Large waves were re-established as the ebbing tide gathered strength, leading to some stupendous (if life-on-the-edge) off- wind sailing. There was a fair bit of carnage; a couple of rudders resigned and at least one mast returned to shore in kit form.

This evening sees the black-tie Championships Dinner at the splendid Hannafore Point Hotel, with fantastic views across the bay. Today we also need to give a big thank you to Winder Boats for generously sponsoring boat security during the week.