EAORA race report

by Event Media on 9 Sep 2009
Saturday 29th August dawned bright and breezy with a 15 to 20 knot westerly breeze and clear skies for the penultimate EAORA race of the season. The race officer set an excellent new 55 mile course out of the Crouch and round the Barrow sands, returning back up the Swin and then the Crouch to finish on the Crouch Yacht Club line.

With spinnakers set Tony and Chuffy Merewether’s Sunfast 32 Amazon led the fleet out of the Crouch with the ebb tide taking the boats at over 10 knots over the ground. Richard Matthews’ Humphreys 42 Oystercatcher XXVI, recently back from the Fastnet, took over the lead at the Whitaker where the fleet gybed and then ran dead down wind to Barrow 5 with some boats making rather untidy gybes and both Eddie Clay’s Sigma 33 Wam Bam and Adrian Lower’s Swann 44 Selene having some down time at the mark sorting out their problems.

From here it was a close fetch until Barrow 7 where the tactics changed as to how far to go into the Barrow sands to take advantage of less adverse tide. Here there were numerous back eddies along the edge with the smaller Amazon being able to take advantage of the shallow water and staying close to the Class 1 boats all the way to the SW Barrow.

At this southerly point in the course spinnakers were set again with Oystercatcher XXVI leading Jason and Judy Payne-James’ Heartbeat III, Stan Fenton’s Jedi Knight and Trevor Bassett’s Oz Privateer then Amazon still close behind. The course to the Whitaker was a straight line leaving all the Maplin buoys to port, but very close to the rum line there was a very small lump which caught Heartbeat III unawares and there they stayed while they ate lunch and waited until the tide turned.

From the Whitaker it was a dead beat the whole way to the finish with an increasing flood tide helping the slower boats up the river. Oystercatcher XXVI finished mid afternoon setting the target to beat with Amazon finishing an hour and a half later and 4th on the water to win the Houghton Cup overall by 8 minutes on corrected time with Oystercatcher XXVI second and Wam Bam third. Class two was won by Duncan Haley’s Double Trouble.

Club Results: http://www.eaora.org.uk