Royal Plymouth Corinthian Yacht Club Spring Series - Day 2
by Jon Buckler 6 Apr 2010 12:13 BST
4 April 2010
After the first race of the Doombar Spring Series which saw relatively light winds many of the crews requested more wind for this week's race! Well we cannot always supply the requested conditions, however this week we managed to (and some!).
With a WNW 18 – 22 knot wind the race officer set a six lap windward leeward course between Yacht Haven Buoy & F Buoy.
The IRC boats were first away with Maridadi able to stretch her legs in these conditions to take an early lead. Quickbrew & Mighty Max 3 were locked into a close battle throughout the race as was Jasmine & Jostix who were revelling in the conditions especially the downwind legs. Rushcutter managed to keep ahead of the two J’s despite their best efforts & tried to keep the leading IRC boats in their sights.
Peter Duffy’s yacht Xstatic suffered an early failure when they lost their genoa halyard & unfortunately had to retire from the race.
Meanwhile the PY boats were also having a close battle with Rumpleteazer & Duchess locked together in close racing throughout the race with Sixpence ever close on their heels.
After an hour of racing a dark ominous cloud descended the Tamar with a torrential downpour and its associated squally winds. Maridadi had just rounded the windward mark & hoisted here spinnaker when the squalls hit & suffered a spectacular knock down. Luckily everyone was ok & they were able to continue the race. Red Kite was also having problems of her own in the squally conditions with a torn spinnaker the result which saw their early retirement. Once the rain squall had past conditions returned to a relative calm for a few minutes allowing the crews to recover before the wind went back to its pre squall strength.
Despite the knockdown John McLaren’s Maridadi went on to win the days racing in the IRC fleet by more than four minutes on corrected time ahead of the J80 Jasmine. After nearly two hours racing the results were tied to the second for Quickbrew & Rushcutter on corrected time with both boats awarded joint third place proving how close the racing had been across the fleet.
The PY fleet saw a mirror image of last weeks racing with Sixpence taking the podium position with Rumpleteazer in second spot & Duchess in third place despite their best efforts.
I would like to thanks all that took part in a very eventful & entertaining race – I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Special thanks also to Sue & Mal Frary who have kindly allowed us to use their fantastic yacht Esperance as committee boat along with their hospitality – thank you.
Race 2 results can be found here.
Cumulative Series Results can be found here.