Noble Marine RS700 National Championship at Castle Cove Sailing Club - Day 3
by Richard Wadsworth 11 Sep 2021 23:49 PDT
9-12 September 2021
Noble Marine RS700 National Championship - Day 3 © RS Sailing
Sunshine and a solid force four greeted the sailors on day three of the Noble Marine RS700 National Championships. Whilst there were some tired bodies from the previous two gruelling days everyone was keen to get back to the race course, which was once again in the harbour.
Race One saw a clean start with the majority of the fleet favouring the left-hand side of the course. Theo Galyer once again began to show the rest of the fleet a clean pair of heels with Rob Higgins, Matt Carter and Richard Wadsworth in a tight contest behind. Rob unfortunately broke his tiller extension during a tack which let Matt through to finish second and Richard third.
By Race Two the wind had increased to 15 to 18 knots and followed a similar pattern to Race One, with Theo taking a commanding lead and tight competition for the remaining positions between Rob, Matt and Richard. Despite Roland Smith giving Theo a "squeeky bum" moment on the last lap with a very close windward leeward incident, Theo went on to take the win, followed by Rob and Matt.
Race Three begin with Simon Hamilton finding himself in a Peter O'nions and Matt Conner sandwich, but once the pleasantries has been exchanged the fleet blasted up the course. Following advice from Theo, Simon Clark decided to apply more kicker during this race, but his boom objected! The race finished with Theo taking the win followed by Rob and Richard.
After three hard races the sailors were looking forward to a well earned beer, but the race officer decided to throw in a bonus race due to the light forecast for Sunday. The wind has dropped to 12 to 15 knots for the fourth race and once the RS700s navigated all the capsized RS800s on the start line the race got under way. Theo once again pulled out into the lead with a chasing pack of Rob, Richard, Matt Conner and Matt Carter. Although this could have been a procession to the end the Sailing Academy decided to deploy a swarm of kids in RS Zests onto the left-hand side of the course. This forced the RS700s to bang in an extra gybe to avoid potentially embarrassing media coverage and a lengthy legal action. This left Matt Conner's boat confused (because it had only done squares all week) and threw him in on his first port gybe of the week, relegating him from fourth to eighth place. Ahead of him Theo took his fourth bullet of the day, followed over the line by Rob and Richard.
Thanks to sponsorship from RS Sailing the sailors were welcomed ashore by a can of chilled pop or booze in return for handing in their tally.
At our Noble Marine daily prize-giving our race performers were awarded a range of goodies. Theo won a bar of Toblerone for his four bullets while Matt Carter and Richard Wadsworth each won an insulated water bottle and a cap.
Today was Hyde Sails day. At our evening party we had a sailor raffle for a brand new RS700 spinnaker generously donated by Hyde Sails. The lucky winner was Pete Purkiss.
Full results available here.