Chichester Yacht Club Snowflake Series - Day 2
by Mark Green 26 Jan 21:37 GMT
26 January 2020
The forecast showed a steadily rising wind speed through the day, with the afternoon forecast to be gusty and wet. The Race officer, Pete Harrison, briefed the competitors that he aimed to have two races and get off the water before the weather turned nasty. As it was the conditions were good for the duration of the races, and the 48 competitors enjoyed some fast downwind reaches.
Pete set a trapezium course, positioning the committee boat Bowling end of the lake, with the windward mark across the marina channel close to Monkey. A broad reach across the channel, avoiding the arrow head shaped starboard channel markers to a gybe mark, allowed the boats with spinnakers to plane and speed away.
In the 19 boat fast fleet, the front runners over the water in race 3 were Andrew Gould in his Musto skiff, Ben and Roz McGrane in a Merlin, David Sayce and Nick Rees in a Fireball, and Steve and Sarah Cockerill in their RS400. The Merlin and the Fireball took an early lead on the first lap, but the Skiff overhauled them and led by almost 2 minutes at the finish. After the handicaps were applied the Merlin took first place followed by the Fireball and the RS400 with the Skiff finishing fourth.
In race 4 Steve and Sarah Cockerill made the most of the increased wind speed and demonstrated some great downwind speed to win the race, followed by Ben and Roz in the Merlin with the Fireball in third.
After four races, the Fast Fleet series is led by Ben and Roz with three wins from four races, closely followed by Steve and Sarah.
The Medium fleet had 21 boats, in Race 3 Iain and Sarah Yardley took the win in their 2000 followed by Mark Riddington in an Aero 7 and CYC's Ian Payne sailing his Laser. In Race 4, Iain and Sarah took another win, followed by Mike and Paula Oliff also sailing a 2000, with Mark Riddington's higher speed over the water converting to third place after the handicap.
After four Medium fleet races Iain and Sarah's 2000 are in first place, with Mark Riddington's Aero7 second, Alex Butler's Solo third and CYC's Mike & Paula's 2000 fourth.
The Slow fleet had eight competitors, made up of a Laser 4.7, Toppers, Mirrors and a Feva XL. In race 3 Zak Smith's Laser won by 5 minutes over the water which converted to a comfortable minute after the handicap was applied. Second place went to CYC's Bas Bush and Oliver Tate sailing a Mirror.
In race 4 Zak took the first place, followed by Sebastian Wattam in his Topper.
After four races Zac Smith has a clear lead, from CYC's Chester Banton.
Full results and more photo's are available on www.cyc.co.uk/openraceresults
The next Snowflake is on the 9th February (10:30 Start).