Winter Series Race 1 - Handicap
Published 19:34 on 28 Oct 2024
Saturday 26th October saw the first race in the SYC winter series. Never before has a winter series race been so summery. With conditions as warm and sunny as any other day this year, shorts and sunglasses were donned by those who had been outside already that day, and winter gear by those who had read that it was the first race of the winter series. The shorts and sunglasses brigade were right on this occasion. The conditions led to an extremely healthy fast handicap fleet of a 505, an RS400, two merlin rockets, an albacore, two yawls and a N12. Starting together with the short course handicap, consisting of 8 lasers there was a healthy level of congestion.
A gentle south easterly breeze filled in as the fleet gathered in the estuary. Race officer Chris Cleaves set X7X323 with X being just short of blackstone. With little wind over at the beach, the area under the start box and up to the non-existent fairway was crowded. As the start gun went and a starboard header came in, John and Annie McLaren in their RS400 tacked onto port and showed the fleet an extremely clean pair of heels to lead easily up the Town side and remembered to round X to starboard, enabling everyone else to remember to do the same.
The leg down to 7 was a long run with weed avoidance and breeze spotting the order of the day. Peter Colclough and Alistair Morley in the 505 managed to demonstrate that they were in fact the fastest boat on the water with just enough wind to fill their massive spinnaker and led the fleet round having overtaken the McLarens somewhere in the bag. The battle between the merlin rockets felt like it was elastic with Frances Gifford and Nikki Bass leading John Burn and Charlie MacKensie for the early part of the race before being sniddled past near the good ship Evangeline.
The yawls, albacore and N12 never looked very far behind, so who knew what was happening on handicap. In fact, Dan Bridger and Adnrew Sterling won the battle of the yawls, and came in near enough to the faster boats to take the race win, as did AJ and Sheila Squire to secure 2nd on handicap. The merlins were split for 3rd and 5th with Fran and Nikki eventually getting the better of John and Charlie, and fourth being taken by the other yawl of Stephen Galvin and Andrew Wood.
After a beautiful day on the water, all eight boats finished very close on corrected time and once back home at Batson reflected on what a wonderful race it had been.
By Frances Gifford
Library Photos
