ISAF Team Racing World Championships - Battle at the top + Video

by Vincent Ahern on 3 Sep 2011 ISAF Team Racing World Championships is being hosted by the Fastnet Marine and Outdoor Education Centre in Schull, Ireland. Competition for quarter final places was intense today, Friday 2nd September.

Teams from Great Britain and USA fought for the top five places to make the cut for the quarter finals. On this third day of round robin racing the joint leaders overnight, West Kirby Hawks (GBR1) and Team Extreme (USA1) went head to head in the first race of the day and, after a titanic struggle, the Hawks took the spoils, putting down an early marker to their chief rivals to date in the Championship. However, they glitched in their seventh race of the day, going down to Woonsocket Rockets (USA2), who pipped them with a 2,3,4 combination.

Team Extreme’s only hiccup was their loss to West Kirby Hawks and they completed the rest of the day’s racing with a clean sheet achieving 90.91% success to date with 30 wins from 33 races to leave them on exactly the same percentage as West Kirby Hawks at the top.

The British Universities Sailing Association (BUSA) team, while suffering two losses, still maintained a top five place. The Woonsocket Rockets completed the day with 10 wins from 11 races, losing only to Team Extreme and made the cut to
the quarter finals also. Wessex Exempt (GBR 2) finally squeezed into the fifth spot leaving Royal St George Gladiators (IRL 1) and the Australians disappointed in their wake after three days of racing.

In the Youth Worlds the battle at the top continued between the Spanish team from Barcelona and host club, Schull Community College, with Schull finally taking top spot. The four teams to contest the final stages of the competition on Saturday morning are: Schull Community College, the Spanish team, West Kirby Youth (GBR1) and Sevenoaks (GBR 2). The top three teams from the Youth Finals then join the five qualifiers from the Open section in the Open quarter finals which will be sailed in round robin format on Saturday afternoon with the Open World semi-finals and final taking place on Sunday morning.