A week, they say, is a long time in politics. Well, if you're a Race Officer in the HYS Hamble Winter Series, a week is a long time too. Last weekend the Race Team was scouring the forecasts for a break in the strong winds. This week, they were scouring the forecasts to see if there would be any wind at all. By 8.00 am on Saturday morning it was clear that there would be no wind to race in all day, so racing was cancelled. The forecast for Sunday did offer some hope after a quiet start, so the CV Wetwheels set off on time to prepare for the anticipated northerly airstream.
The two day, five race, Hamble IRC Autumn Championship, was now down to a two race shoot out for the glassware. Keen to get two in and start on time PRO Peter Bateson, set up a quarter of a mile west of Hill Head (4M). The course was a short windward/leeward with a laid windward mark 300 metres east of hamblewinterseries.com (4J). 4J was used as the spreader. The laid leeward mark was a 150 meters north of the CV. Time was not the only consideration when laying this course, there was not a lot of water around with a big spring tide down 0.74m on Sunday morning. With Alacrity, Sigma 38, Chris and Vanessa Choules, found they could not leave their Hamble River mooring on time, but at least the crew had an extra half an hour in Jenny's Café on Hamble High Street.
Tokoloshe 4, Cape 31, Michael Bartholomew, shot round the two laps of the course in 43 minutes and 55 seconds in IRC 1, despite there being only 4/5 knots of breeze. Fanatic, Cape 31, Johnny Cooper came home second, just under two minutes later and Raging Bull 2, Tim Tolcher was third. Jiraffe, Cape 31, Simon Perry had a coming together with the riser on the leeward mark. It seems Jiraffe does not only have a long neck but also a long keel, though to be fair at low water there is some slack in the buoy's ground tackle. "We just stopped to eat our sandwiches," joked Simon. It was good to note that the rest of the fleet understood what a rib carrying an M flag meant, as they all gave Jiraffe and the tangled buoy a wide berth.
In IRC 2, Arcus, A35, Paul Newell and John Howell, won from the J109's Jenie, Charles Berry and Jago, Mike & Susie Yates. IRC 3 saw Quokka, Half Ton, James Crew, beat the J92's of David Greenhalgh and Beckie Walford. Duncan Peace in Pacifist came home first in IRC 4, followed by Imptish, Impala 28, Barnaby Smith and M'Enfin?!, Corby 25, Sophie Chudziak & Bertrand Malas.
For Race 2, with the wind building to 5/7 knots, Classes 1&2, started with one lap of the Race 1 course, then a second beat to the windward mark and spreader, followed by spinnaker reaches to East Knoll (4H) where a gybe took them to QXI International (4N). A two-mile beat to Darling Buoy (4R), was followed by a spinnaker reach to 4J and a run to the original laid leeward mark with finish at Hill Head (4M,) a total of 7.5 miles.
Classes 3 and 4, omitted the lap of the Race 1 course, but then followed the same route as IRC 1 and IRC 2, 6.2 miles in all.
Tokoloshe 4 repeated its Race 1 result with a second bullet. This gave the "new" Tokoloshe the IRC Class 1 Championship that last year's "old" Tokoloshe won so convincingly. In doing so she won the Hamble Star Trophy for the Big Boat Championship for the second time too. In the second race, Jagerbomb, J111, Paul Griffiths saved it's time to relegate Fanatic to third place. In the overall standings these positions were reversed however.
In IRC 2, Jago finished first on the water and on elapsed time, but Arcus did enough in sealing second to win the class overall. Jeanie's fourth place was good for third overall. Quokka was another double bullet boat in taking the IRC 3 first place. Brenda's J's second in Race 2 gave them second overall with J'ronimo third. Duncan Peace in Pacifist also scored two first places to take the IRC 4 prize. Banter, Mustang 30 Mk2, Ian Handley, improved to take second in Race 2 and second overall on count back having been tied on 6 points with two other boats. Whilst Ian managed not to repeat his trick of going to the wrong mark this week, he was less than pleased with being OCS on both starts and having to battle back. Hopefully with his co-owner Tim James back on board next week, things will improve. Imptish, held on for third in the countback contest, just pushing out M'Enfin?!. There was good deal of discussion afterwards in IRC 3, over the Channel 72 dialogue between a warship and the "survey vessel" Sabre. This included the threat of a shot across the bows of Sabre! Sadly, it turned out that Sabre was in fact HMS Sabre and it was just an exercise. No warships were harmed during Race 2.
Back in the HRSC Clubhouse, Commodore Steph Merry present the prizes for the Hamble IRC Autumn Championship. This was followed by Julian Cox, Manager of Force 4, Port Hamble who presented the day prizes. These included very well received goody bags supplied by B&G, Force 4 bags and discount vouchers to be spent in the Chandlery.
Next week sees the second weekend of the Hamble One Design Championship and Race Week 3 of the HYS Hamble Winter Series. The Day sponsor will be The Bugle pub in Hamble, whose association with the club goes back to 1919.
Text and Image courtesy of www.hamblewinterseries.com