Lucozade Hurricane 5.9 Grand Prix at Rutland Sailing Club

Despite a rather indifferent forecast, twenty five 5.9's traveled to the Rutland Cat Open, over the weekend of the 19th/20th May.

Saturday started with plenty of sun and a light breeze which was fairly consistent a the end of the Lake where the racing is held, and race one got underway with not much delay.

Robin and Lisa were showing good speed and picked their way through the patchy conditions to take an early, but soon considerable lead, leaving Andy Webb and James Isherwood to fight it out for second with David and Jo Bartlett. On the last lap Duncan Ward and Wendy Goodland confounded their plans and came through to take second.

Race two brought a marginally stronger wind, with another starboard biased line, a feature of the weekend! About twenty seconds after the start gun, a recall gun was fired somewhat late. David and Jo were early leaders with Andy and James also in the running, but by the second lap Robin and Lisa were through again and established a commanding lead, only to be informed by the Committee Boat that they had been over at the start. Whilst they sailed in to get the Barbie fired up, David and Jo managed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory, and allow Andy and James through to win.

Sunday dawned, although you could have been excused for missing it, cold damp grey skies, but at least the wind had arrived allowing double trapezing and wildthinging. Race three was a mini Round Rutland, a huge triangle with a spacer mark on the second leg to keep boats away from the middle headland. Out for revenge Robin and Lisa once again were flying, and had a substantial lead by the second mark, followed by David and Jo and Andy and James, whilst Ben Goodland and Neil Mallett showed some speed to hold Kevin Skinner and Mandy Cox off for fourth.

After a break for lunch Races four and five were sailed back to back, with an unfortunate 40-degree wind shift in between, which caused some delay whilst the course was re-set.

Robin and Lisa took the gun again in both of these last two races, once again with commanding leads. James Blackburn and Heather Clarke just pipped Paul and Caroline Isherwood on the line for second place in race four with Phil Marks and Dan Taylor getting their "Green Machine" into fourth.

Race five, with the wind starting to drop, brought a resumption of the Webb/Bartlett dual, with David and Jo getting the second place, but they needed to put another boat between them and Andy to avoid loosing second place overall on the discard.

Overall, a good weekends racing, but the decision to run three races on Sunday meant a 6:00pm prize giving, and must be sorted out before next year.

Overall Results:

More Information:

• YachtsandYachting.com Hurricane 5.9 Page
• Hurricane 5.9 Class Association
• Rutland Sailing Club