Hamble River Wednesday Night Series - Series A race 7
by Paul Howard 28 Jun 2016 15:40 BST
22 June 2016
It was a difficult evening for all of us, there were big spring tides with the low water of 1.24 metres above chat datum coinciding almost with our starting sequences which meant a lot of our marks were not available to us.
The wind at the start was reasonably constant at 7 knots from SSE with the forecast predicting it was going to back to South and decreasing to 4/5 knots at 2100.
Unfortunately, the wind dropped away before we could get you back across the line and Obsession would not start so we could not shorten the courses. at that time there was still a breeze and we were hopeful of getting most fleets finished.
Congratulations to the four XOD's who persevered to the last and came home on the first of the flood tied and not much else, they were changing places right up until the gun.
It is worth drawing attention to 8.2 of the Sailing Instructions which state "in a dying wind, if common consent between competitors in a class can be reached on a substitute finishing mark, and the race committee informed of each boat's finishing time at that mark, the results will stand."
A number of boats did take advantage of this clause and have been given a result.
Well done to all 24 of you that did turn out and let's hope that next week we have wind because the tide is favourable, funny how that happens every two weeks.