Charles Hurst Jaguar Land Rover Ballyholme Yacht Club Icebreaker Series - Week 2
by Mark Mackey 18 Oct 2019 06:19 BST
13 October 2019
Charles Hurst Jaguar Land Rover Ballyholme Yacht Club Icebreaker Series Week 2 © Mark Mackey
Week two of the Charles Hurst Jaguar Land Rover Icebreaker series was quite a bit calmer than the first week, on the water at least. The previous night's activities did have an impact on the turn out on the race course and of the performance of some of the competitors! BYC's Centenary Ball was on the Saturday night and some of the revellers must still have been dancing instead of racing!
Mark Mackie and Charlie Westhurst both managed to appear for the early morning "big boat" racing but then went back to bed and missed the afternoon racing. At least Charlie showed up for Sunday tea-time pints! The other missing competitors were the Simms family. John and Conor are in Portugal doing a mammoth cycle to raise money for the fantastic Pancreatic Cancer Charity. If anyone has not already done so please make a donation on their just giving page. John was texting to find out what the wind conditions were and was delighted to hear that it was very light winds... not a bad week for him to miss!
The Toppers were away first and Daniel managed to beat Charlie after 2.5 laps of the course. Charlie still leads overall with 3 points between them. Only one small dinghy this week so no one for 'Jenny and Jonny to race against! Lucas Nixon beat Ellen Barbour in the Laser 4.7s and no multihulls again this week, has anyone seen them?
The large dinghies had six boats taking part and again David and Ryan managed to keep Sandra and Rob at bay to claim another first place. The start of this fleet was very interesting and Roger and Ken both tried to start the upwind beat with their spinnakers up. I think, in reality, they were both very late for the start, but it did look like an early bid for Mug of the Day.
The Laser Radials had close racing yet again. There were a few in this fleet have to remember to sign out, and they were handed DSQs. A shame with the fleet racing so close. Mind you, others were handed DNCs for just not turning up.
Those who did sail within the rules had a great race and David Smyth claimed his first victory in the radial rig. Jess Winton was 3rd with Russell Finlay squeezed back into 4th place and was lucky not to be over taken by Sara Odisio who was breathing down his neck. This win pushes David to the top of the fleet after two races with Jess in 2nd and Sara in 3rd. Hopefully the wayward souls will return next week.
In the Laser standards there was a very familiar pattern. Chris Boyd relished the tricky light conditions and pulled way ahead of the chasing pack. At one stage he was nearly a leg ahead of the rest of us! James Moore was the only one who was anywhere close to him and James sailed a great race to claim second spot. Richard Ramsey was back in the saddle and made an impact on his return with a superb third holding off the new light wind specialist, Charlie Taylor. John Simms was gutted when he heard Charlie had such a good result in these conditions. Ballyholme Yacht Clubs Volunteer of the year, Keith Story had a fine race finishing 5th, not bad considering the rest of his table from the previous night did not even make the start line! Maybe Keith was dodging some of the Jokers that Alex was providing at the table... clearly Robin, Alex and Charlie were not!
Unfortunately no Mug of the Day was presented, although apart from the two spinnaker upwind starts there were not many misfortunes to report. One person did think the Race Officer might have put himself in contention by starting the boats out of sequence... probably another gala night related error!
See everyone on Sunday afternoon after what should be an amazing weekend of rugby. Some adjustments to be made to results - don't panic.