Sail-World.com : French Flying 15 National Championships
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French Flying 15 National Championships |
Saturday 12th of July saw the start of the French National Flying Fifteen championships. Held this year in the waters off Dinard and St Malo the event was hosted by the Dinard Yacht Club. Twenty one boats took part with entrants from a number of French clubs, Belgium and two British boats.
Race one started in a force two to three with a good swell running. The first beat set the scene for event with Eric Basset and Arnaud Biet, Chris Swallow in Hayffever (with guest crew Damien Muller) and Chris and Tracy Harris in Sans Culottes all featuring at the front of the fleet. Basset collided with Swallow in a port starboard incident, but having completed his penalty still went on to win the first race.
In fact Basset and Biet won all three races on day one, although the British boats were hard on their heels throughout.
Day two dawned with very light winds and calm sea. The fleet took some ninety minutes to reach the race area and drifted through some torrential rain on the way. After a considerable postponement the racing got under way with Basset and Biet again taking all three races.
Overnight the placings were:
Basset and Biet 1st 6 points
Swallow and Muller 2nd 12 points
Harris and Harris 3rd 16 points
Cojan and Coirre 4th 21 points
With the possibility of two races on the final day and two discards in the series Bassett and Beit had the event sewn up and did not take to the water. However there was all to sail for in the minor placings.
The race officer, who had a challenging weekend, moved the race area to the west, and read the conditions correctly to get a race away as the sea breeze filled in.
There was a good tussle up the first beat in very light shifty conditions. At the first mark a number of new faces appeared at the front, although by the start of the second beat normal service had been resumed with Sans Culottes in third with Hayffever close behind.
Hayffever lost a couple of places on the final beat, and at the spreader Chris and Tracy Harris needed to make progress from fourth if they were to snatch second overall from Chris Swallow.
Chris Swallow dropped a couple more places, whilst the Harris’s managed to gybe inside two boats at the final spreader mark and went on to a comfortable second place in the race, second overall, winning visitor and winning mixed crew, whilst Chris Swallow finished third overall.
by Chris Harris
9:04 AM Mon 11 Aug 2008 GMT
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