Garmin Hamble Winter Series - Week 2

16 October 2005
By Eddie Mays 17 Oct 2005 15:11

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Photo © Beken of Cowes

The strong SB3 fleet have a blast on the second weekend of the Garmin Hamble Winter Series

Most of the 250 yachts and Sportsboats entered in the GARMIN Hamble Winter Series took part in the day's racing. A good mainly Easterly breeze enabled the Black Fleet Committee boat to lay a start line just North of the Brambles Post and all the classes used East Brambles as their first turning mark.

With large numbers of boats in the first three classes the start line had to be long enough to accommodate them all. However this did lead to bunching at the ODM end of the line as boats tried to get out of the adverse tidal stream and head towards the north shore. Both 'Magnum 2' in IRC 1 and 'J Spot' in the Bowsprit class were adjudged OCS. For the rest of the starts the line was shortened and had less port-end bias. This resulted in a more even spread along the start line, and cleaner starts. At the X-332 start Jonathon Butler's 'Peanut' lost her foresail but recovered well during the course of the race to finish 3rd behind Ian Dawson (Glide-X) and Robert Peters (Reckless Rat).

Line honours in IRC 1 went to Stewart Hawthorn's J-133 'Jump'. On the final leg from Hill Head to the finish at Marinetrack.com the wind was varying enough to make significant differences in pointing angles. 'Jump' was able to hold her port tack most of the way to the finish but behind her Jack Pringle's 'Mankie' was headed quite badly on starboard and undoubtedly lost time. The J-133 took the class on corrected time. Old 'rivalries' were renewed in IRC 2 where this week it was Jim McGregor's Elan 40 'Flair IV' who took both the line and class win from Peter Rutter's Elan 37 'Quokka'. There were also wins for Neville Hodkin's Sigma 362 'Extra Djinn' in IRC3 and past class winners the Meakins Family (Sigma 38) and Richard & Valerie Griffith (Sigma 33)

As usual the Sportsboat Committee boat had set up station off the Meon shore and the first sequence of starts went smoothly with no General Recalls. With no Mumm 30s racing in the White Group the first class away was the 1720s and Mark Greenway (La Licorne) set the pattern for the day by winning both races, both times from Damien & Georgie Baker (Mad Cow). It was a similar story in the 27 strong Hunter 707 class where Mark Gillett's 'Pocket Battleship' took the gun twice and there was another double winner in the general Sportsboats where Paul & Marie-Claude Heys sailed their 1720 to victory. In the first race, after a very close race, David Rowen's Melges 24 took line honours by 10 secs but finished 2nd on handicap.

Since their introduction a couple of years the Laser SB3s have steadily increased their numbers. This year they are the largest class with 50 entries so far. With many good teams competing it is impossible to anticipate who might come out as winner in seven weeks time. The first race was full of incident with boats changing places on a regular basis. The RAF entry 'Synchro' was unfortunate to lose her rig at the top mark on the 2nd lap in a clash with another boat. On the 3rd lap a wind shift caused the beat to become very one-sided, even though the race team had moved the bottom mark to try and compensate for the change. Colin Simonds (Doolalli) hung onto to a small lead from the halfway mark but he had incurred a penalty on the way round and this, added to his elapsed time, dropped him to 5th. The afternoon race was as exciting especially as all classes used the same windward mark and spreader buoy but the Sportsboats and Hunter 707s had a shorter downwind leg. Their bottom mark was placed about 200 yds upwind of the faster classes bottom mark. By the middle of the race the action at this part of the course led to the very confused seas and many sail handling errors. Mike Budd (Gul) and David Cheyne (Team Harken) were the individual race winners. This win in the afternoon race also gave Team Harken the Autumn Championship (see separate report).

Malcolm Donald has put two videos online of the SB3 Autumn Championship racing. Go to www.malcolmdonald.com to view the movies.

Martin Cowell, Sales Manager for Lewmar – this week's Day Sponsors, presented the weekly prizes at a packed Hamble River clubhouse later in the afternoon. Full results can be found on the dedicated website www.hamblewinterseries.com. Next weekend has racing on both days with the Hamble Big Boat Series concluding as well as the normal series racing on Sunday.

Provisional Results:

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