IRC Solent Region Championship 2015 Day 5: Battle of Britain Regatta

Battle of Britain Regatta © Martin Farrow

The day started with light winds from the North and there was a strong east going tide all day as low water was just 30 mins before the first start. The Committee boat managed to 'see off' a large fleet of Etchells amongst others and anchored in a superb location on the plateau just to the South East of Hill Head Buoy. Race Officer Kathy Smalley set three good courses well suited for the conditions using existing Solent racing marks so that there was no hanging around waiting for the 'perfect' windward mark to be laid. The only delay was due to a Class 2 boat which attached itself to the pin end buoy on the start of Race 1 and took a good 10 minutes to disentangle itself.

The courses each comprised of an upwind leg towards Southampton Water, a run to the Island shore requiring plenty of gybing followed by a beat back to Flying Fish buoy and then another short beat/fetch to the finish. The use of Flying Fish buoy in every race was I am sure purely co-incidental but reminded us that Kathy was formerly a very successful helm herself in her Laser 28 also named 'Flying Fish'.

Class 1 was dominated by Michael Blair's Cobra which was sadly the only entrant on the course. In spite of this the results were close and Cobra's corrected time was 16 seconds higher than Jifi's in the first race and just seconds lower in the other two races. The first 4 of the 7 boats in class 2 had seconds between them in each race with Stewart Hawthorn's JiFi finishing the day on 6 points (1-4-1), David Riley's No Retreat on 7 points (2-1-4), Julian Tickner's Aztec on 8 points (3-3-2) and Malcolm Robert's Sunshine on 9 points (4-2-3). The following day Jifi turned out again to win class 2 for the whole regatta.

The 8 boats in Classes 3 and 4 also raced together, with Louise Morton's recently re-furbished French Quarter Tonner 'Bullit' showing a clean pair of heels to all of the others. She comfortably won class 4 with Crakajax second (7 points) and Siblation and Crazy Horse each on 10 points to tie for 3rd. Class 3 looked as if it would be dominated by Sigma 38 'With Alacrity', but perhaps it was the 20knot squall going through shortly before race 3 that persuaded them not to take part in that race. Little wonder when one of their crew, who took the helm for part of race 2 was only about 6 years old. In the end that stalwart competitor Xarifa stayed the course and took the day's prize and the IRC Championship win for class 3.

Conclusion: We enjoyed an excellent day's racing in superb conditions. We just need a few more boats to take part regularly in classes 1, 3 and 4 to achieve the close competition in those classes which we saw in Class 2, so lets all try and get more boats out for the next two events and for 2016.

Class Winners:

Class 1: Michael Blair, Cobra
Class 2: Stewart Hathorn & H C Heys, JiFi
Class 3: Teresa Whelan, Xarifa
Class 4: Louise Morton, Bullit