Hansa GUL VR Series 2 competition concludes
by David Durston 17 Sep 10:04 BST
Hansa GUL Summer VR Series 2 Podium © Hansa class UK
My last report gave the positions at the halfway point in the series. At that time the top 5 were: Paul Holzherr in 1st place with a 12 point lead over the winner of the previous series, Paul Phillips.
Seven points behind in 3rd was David Durston, just one point ahead of Rory McKinna; and in a close 5th place, Mike Everitt. With 40 races remaining, anything could happen.
As COVID rules on movement and organised groups were relaxed in August, some Sailability groups started to get back on the water. Also people have started to return to work and have taken the opportunity to get away from their homes for welcome holidays. Perhaps more surprisingly for a Virtual Regatta event, injury, illness, and pain has prevented some people from being able to take part. This has impacted on the number of participants each week, but the events have still attracted between 9 and 15 sailors for the competition.
Using the highest point scoring system meant that the points received by the winner of a race are less when there are fewer people racing; the winner gets the number of points equal to the number of boats starting each race, 2nd place gets 1 less point, etc. By the end of the 10 week series Paul Holzherr had extended his lead to 34 points ahead of his nearest rival.
The fight for 2nd place got very interesting over the last five events. In week 6 Paul Phillips missed some of the races, and his results in the ones that he did could not keep his position. David and Rory leapfrogged him to take 2nd and 3rd, still separated by 1 point. This remained the same in week 7, with Paul's results slipping further, putting him 5 points behind Mike going into the final week. Rory had a 1 point lead over David after week 9, which he extended to finish in 2nd place, 3 points ahead of David who finished 3rd. Paul had a better final day, piping Mike to 4th place by just 1 point.
Final Positions:
1st Paul Holzherr
2nd Rory McKinna
3rd David Durston
4th Paul Phillips
5th Mike Everitt
Paul, Rory, and David will receive GUL vouchers to the value of £50, £40, and £30 respectively. Hansa is very grateful to GUL for their continued support.