MOCRA Multihulls at Royal Southampton Yacht Club - Race 3
by Simon Forbes 29 Oct 2000 17:23 GMT
The Royal Southampton Yacht Club Winter series continued with race 3 on Sunday 29 October. The previous two weekends had seen very light winds but a succession of gales were now buffeting the South Coast, and gale warnings were sufficient to deter the less committed.
Sunday morning dawned at Southampton with blue sky and 15 knots of breeze. Race Officer Geoff Lynch stationed Committee Boat Hound off Netley and set a beat to Royal Southampton buoy on the west shore of Southampton Water. The Multihull Class saw five trimarans venture out, the wind increased
before the start and Scooby III went for two reefs, Kokomo and Trivia one reef, while Piglet went for a storm jib with one reef while Carbon Tiger went for full mainsail and storm jib.
Dragonfly Kokomo (James Stewart) got the best start on starboard at the pin end with F24 Trivia (Mike Wigmore) going well, meanwhile Scooby III (Simon Forbes) was under-powered in the lulls and Carbon Tiger and Piglet were taking a while to get into their stride. Kokomo led around the windward mark, followed by Trivia, Scooby and Carbon Tiger.
Carbon Tiger(Brian Haynes) went for 70m2 red spinnaker on the three mile reach to Cathead near the Hamble River entrance and quickly drew level with Kokomo. Kokomo sailed high, then set her spinnaker while Carbon Tiger was forced to drop her spi in order to climb up to the mark and rounded just ahead of Kokomo. Meanwhile Scooby shook one reef out and caught Trivia at the mark, but a sloppy rounding gaveTrivia the windward berth as the fleet beat back to Hound Buoy. As Scooby and Trivia charged along side by side Trivia's mainsail split from luff to leach in a gust just below the second reef and Mike Wigmore was forced to retire.
A big black rain cloud approached and Scooby III went back to two reefs as the Committee boat registered 35 knots of wind as the multihulls beat to Hovercraft 2, the cloud soon passed, though enlivened by Calshot Lifeboat and a Helicopter on practice manouvres. By the time Deans Elbow was reached the mean wind speed was down to around 15 knots and the beat continued another mile up to Hythe Knock to the north of Hythe Pier.
Carbon Tiger stretched away from Kokomo who suffered mainsail damage when shaking out a reef, while Scooby III finally got round to hoisting a small spinnaker and going to full mainsail on the reach to Cadland off Fawley Oil Refinery and soon saw 17 knots boat speed in the gusts. Scooby's spinnaker takedown was rather premature when the head blew out on the spinnaker. Farrier F25C Piglet (Martin Bosher) was making up for lost time having changed up from storm jib to the regular jib.
Carbon Tiger took line honours in a time of one hour nine minutes giving an average of 9.5 knots around the 11 mile course. Kokomo finishing over two minutes later took corrected time honours by 2 and a half minutes from Carbon Tiger.
Corrected Time positions:
1 Kokomo Dragonfly 800 James Stewart,Lucy Kennedy,Martin Orton
2 Carbon Tiger Corsair F28R Brian Haynes,Keith Bliss,Rob Gutteridge
3 Scooby III Dragonfly 800 Simon Forbes,Dick Hazelgrove,Alistair Dance
4 Piglet Farrier F25C Martin Bosher,Spencer Harrison,Simon Burt,Ollie Houseman
Rtd Trivia Corsair F24 Mike Wigmore,John Harris-Burland,Guy Knight
DNS Orion Firebird Harvey Bowden,
DNS Olana Dragonfly 800 George Cormack,
DNS Gazprom Ivan 30 Vitaly Belyakov
DNS Shakatak Corsair F28R Pete Jenkins
DNS Triple Dutch Dragonfly 800 Peter Knape
DNS Blue Tail Dragonfly 800 Tim Wilson
DNS Wingover Crowther Twiggy Brian Wilkinson
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The Royal Southampton Winter Series continues until the 3 December. Contact Cathy Crawley for entry details: racing@rsyc.org.uk, Tel 02380 223352.
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