IOM Eastern District Champion Skipper Series event 2 at Huntingdon Radio Yacht Club

A brisk northerly breeze greeted the 19 skippers from around the region, who had entered the days event, with a good contingent from Coalhouse Fort, a couple from Chelmsford and a lonely Geoff Josey from Broads RYC and our own club with a record ten entries, thank you to all for your company on the day.

After grabbing an early coffee and cake from the galley, PRO Andy Baldock gathered the skippers for the briefing around 9.40, a two heat system using HMS was deployed, as our usual sailing area of the spit was still rather soggy, our mother club Hunts SC kindly allowed us to use the east bank, but there was limited viewing of the start line for 19 bodies, hence splitting the fleet, most of you know my personal views on two fleets, the hot shots can battle it out in A fleet, while everyone else can have a great days racing with skippers of similar ability in B fleet, and the added bonus of having a break between races, unless you are boat #46 Phil Davenport who wanted to get his money's worth and seemed to race all 24 races!

After the two seeding races the fleet was split and racing proper began in earnest.

Being a northerly wind (our least favoured) it was a tad on the testing side for all skippers, from the start line there was a decent beat up to the windward mark, a reach down wind to a second mark and finally a rounding of the downwind mark, all port roundings, the racing was completed around this course of two triangles for the whole for the whole of the event.

It was an extremely testing day for all skippers with the wind direction and the very gusty, chargeable, flukey conditions, most frustratingly there also seemed to be some big holes in the wind, which changed their position every race, so consistency of conditions was not the order of the day, however this made for some interesting results, with a number of the top skippers finding themselves in B fleet.

Racing continued until midday-ish until a call for lunch break, after lunch the racing continued in much the same fashion as the morning, however, our junior member boat #88 Hayden Wallace must had had an injection of chocolate, and spent most of the afternoon in A fleet, outsailing his dad in some races.

The battle at the top of the score sheet was an ever changing picture with the top three of Dave Green, David Hope & Buzz Coleman all very close, and the final battle for 1st place went down to the wire in the final race with local Dave Green victorious.

Congratulations to all our prize winners and on behalf of the club a massive thank you to all who travelled to compete, whilst there is a serious side to the racing, its always a good day of banter within the district, for anyone reading this and not daring to put their toe in the water and enter an open DO IT, I promise a great day of racing and racing/tuning tips from the day.

Finally a big thank you to the crew at HRYC who gave up their time to ensure the day ran smoothly, and of course the gratefully received cakes from Steve Brown & Andy Harrold.

Our next event will be 5th October DF95 EDCS 3, we look forward to welcoming you on the day

IOM Eastern District Champion Skipper Series event 2 at Huntingdon - photo © Andy Start

Overall Results:

"Trier of the Day" prize - Andy Seymour - CHFRYC