Guy Fawkes Pursuit at Leigh & Lowton Sailing Club

The morning of Sunday 7th November saw bright sunshine but with a poor forecast in terms of wind strength for the afternoon. Nethertheless, 8 visitors and 35 club boats ventured out onto the water for the annual Guy Fawkes Pursuit race at Leigh and Lowton Sailing Club.

With very little wind around, the three Optimists of Haydn Griffiths, Bobby Hewitt and Matt Leckie made their way out to the start as the slowest (and probably the bravest, facing three hours on the water) boats in the fleet. The wind made no attempt to improve as they vainly worked their way around the course which covered the whole of Pennington Flash.

By the time the faster boats were crossing the start line, they were over half way around the course but the wind started to fill in slightly from a different direction to that which the race officer had set the course. As a result the course was a gift to the faster asymmetric boats who were flying their gennakers along several of the longer legs and, with very few beats to split the fleet up, the wind direction allowed them to catch up with the Optimists after less than an hour.

Matt Mee (Hollingworth Lake SC) and Emma Norris (LLSC) in Emma’s RS200 drew away from the rest of the fleet and established a clear lead which they held until the end of the race. The rest of the fleet were involved in their own battles with four RS400’s filling the top six slots. Ed Thomas from Pilkington in his Phantom split these up, coming fourth, but Richard and Heather Marsh from Elton proved the strongest of the four, finishing second with Louise McKeand and Kathy Partington showing that, despite their recent forays into a RS200, had lost nothing of their skills in the RS400, coming third overall.

Next week sees the start of the Revett Series which runs until the 12th December 2010. For further details, see the club website.

Overall Results: