Short-Race Handicap Report

Published 16:22 on 9 Jun 2026

Determination and grit. Thats what it took to complete Sunday's race. The 15 to 20 knot breeze was barreling down the estuary like an over enthusiastic greyhound, a flock of 4 radials and one 4.7 turned up at the start line. 

Its safe to say that many downhauls were tightened between the five and one minute guns! Allan Willcox (radial) was over the line, Christian Day (radial) got the best start, leading into a battle up to mark one. Showing a good command of her radial rig, Emily Hoar was the first of the fleet to round the mark, followed swiftly by Christian. 

The group fighting to catch them consisted of Allan and Ivy Hart (4.7), with Adam Ryan-Carter (radial) close behind. Emily and Christian were sparring for the entire run, while Ivy and Allan faced a similar duel for third (while having a friendly chat of course!). 

Adam was recovering from a recent capsize, but showed tenacity by continuing to hunt the pack in front of him. The wind dropped off as the fleet entered Southpool creek, ensuring that Emily kept her lead around the mark. 

Allan pulled slightly ahead of Ivy to be third around the mark, but his lead soon turned into a tense round of trying to tack on the (many) shifts. The following end of the fleet soon started to eat the distance to Emily and Christian. A wall of wind is what greeted them when they rejoined the main estuary, Christian had an untimely capsize, while Emily was showing the other sailors what the definition of flat hiking was. Unfortunately for her, Christian recovered amazingly quickly and piped her to the next mark (2). Ivy and Allan continued racing side by side, until Ivy made the fatal flaw of letting her kicker off too much. This ended in disaster when  not only did she deathroll, but her rudder fell off. Unfortunately, the author cannot report what was happening to the rest of the fleet at that time, as she was trying to rescue her rudder. After finally managing to get it back on, the author sailed the final stretch. 

Congratulations to my fellow competitors, that was a wild one!
The final results were:
1 Christian,
2 Emily,
3 Allan,
4 Ivy,
5 Adam.

- By Ivy Hart | Photos Lucy Burn