International Moth Inlands at Queen Mary Sailing Club

A game of two halves for the International Moth Inlands at Queen Mary © Daniel Tobin

A game of two halves – or not?

May the 9th and 10th saw the Moth fleet travel to Queen Mary for the Inland National Championship. Not a great deal of wind was forecast.

20 boats lined up with several new boats including 2 Mach 2’s, a Ninja and a Bladerider FX. Mike Lennon led at the first mark with Simon Payne second but being in a city meant the wind had to come round a lot of building and few trees making any position tenuous. Despite pulling out a reasonable lead Lennon was passed again and again by Payne, Mike Cooke and others before eventually pulling through to take the gun.

Race two carried on in a similar vain with Payne taking an early lead only to have it snatched away before eventually retaking the lead before the bit that counts – The finish.

Race 3 – More of the same really except by now the wind was failing with bigger holes and smaller gusts, giving the fleet the Moth sailors nightmare of sitting in a hole while half the fleet foils around you. It’s a bit like taxiing for take off while the everybody else is airborne. This race was a Payne Cooke shoot out with Cooke taking his new boat way out in front eventually leaving Payne to play with himself while Cook took Ninja close to lapping 3rd place boat Adam May. The rest of the fleet was tightly packed with 3rd place up for grabs and lots of pace changing.

Race 4 – And some more of the same still, but getting worse, more holes than gusts and long periods of low riding (taxiing rather than flying ). Simon Payne took this race to give him a rather impressive 2,1,2,1 in very challenging conditions. Mike Cooke’s 1,2,3 enough for second overall and Lennon took 3rd with 1,3,3.

Sunday’s 3 race schedule was cancelled due to not meeting the Moth class championship criteria of 5 knots wind speed on the race area. Leaving Saturdays overnight standings as the final score.

Overall Results: