Saltash Sailing Club Duchy Timber Spring Series - Race 2
by Chris Hampe 10 Apr 2005 17:56 BST
Bright sunshine and a chilly northwesterly wind of 25 knots brought difficult conditions in Plymouth sound. For the IRC and PY classes today’s course was the harbour course with the race starting at F buoy the course would take the fleets outside the breakwater before a long beat up the river Tamar to finish in front of the clubhouse at Saltash.
First away in IRC was Trevor Bardwell-Jones on Inky Paper with a port tack flyer at the odm. David
Oliver’s Xtorsion8 closely followed them whilst the bigger boats battled for space in the centre of the line. Frank Ellwood on Lingo had to restart after colliding with the odm and would never fully recover from their initial loss. In a race that would be mainly upwind Neville Davenport’s X362 Musk Ox dominated to win the race by just over a minute form Xxtorsion8 who felt they had lost the race on the final beat up the river but did hold on to beat John Dyer on his 40.7 Exocet Strike by just 3 seconds.
In the PY class Terry Curtis found the conditions much to his liking sailing Private Life first away from the start to win by over five minutes. Once again Dave Hearn & Derek Prickett on Sea Bee got the better of Dave Moores’s Rough Diamond for second.
There was much confusion at the start of first race for the J80’s. The race committee had changed the initial course before the warning signal although several boats including series leader Angus Mcphie on Wave Warrior continued to sail the original course. Steve Hills on JSM won he first race by one and a half minutes with Richard Bickford on Liberty just Piping Jem sailed by Peter Wanstall for second. There was plenty of action with the difficult conditions catching out all but the best-prepared crew.
Wave Warrior rectified their earlier misfortune by winning race two by 47 seconds whilst Steve Northmore on Quickeye was disqualified for being over at the start. Daryel Conyers on Oceans Eleven was second 5 seconds ahead of JSM with a gap of two minutes before the main pack. With four races now sailed Wave Warrior leads with 3 points from Daryl Conyers on 6 pts with Jem and Liberty equal third with 11 points each.
After the Prizegiving the clubhouse was jammed packed to the sounds of Mad Dog Mcrae and everyone enjoyed the craic late in to the night.
Another busy program next week, whilst the J80’s will have two more races in Plymouth Sound the PY and IRC fleets will both sail a long distance race that will start and finish from the clubhouse line at Saltash. During the afternoon there will be an intrusting car show at the club and in the evening music will be provide by Mrtyle.
Don’t miss out, Full results and details at www.saltashsailingclub.co.uk