Summer Series at Royal Temple Yacht Club - Race 2

The fleet had perfect blue water sailing on the day after midsummer in a North-going neap tide. Peter Jackson set a course for Class 1, at 19 miles a little longer than recent habit.

A reach to the Gull buoy at the North end of the Goodwin Sands was followed by a beat to the South Brake buoy off Deal, then a run with the tide to Broadstairs and back via the 'Stonar' club Mark off Ramsgate.

With the Summer Series not being part of the club championship crews and fleet were rather decimated by holidays. The sports boats managed to get out minimum 4 crew, and scratch boat Assassin was missing her mainsheet hand and pit man, but still training juniors so used a small mainsail, with 11 racing in all. An early 8 knot westerly was forecast to back to the SW and freshen to 15 knots, increasing later.

A light fetch to mark 1 was led by the modified Cork 1720 Flying Pig, but with kites set the wind change hit all at once and only Peter Jackson in Assassin weathered mark 2 without dropping. The beam reach to Gull turned into a fetch and the Stimson 42 legged it away, chased by Martin Law in Flying Pig, Simon Northrop in the Melges 24 Lock Stock and Gary Waters in the J97 Jura. The 1720, with guard rails and hiking crew, kept ahead of the Melges on the long beat and run but Jura had kite problems in gusts getting up to 20knots and retired from 4th.

The 42 had a sheeting snag near the weather mark but had built a 2 mile lead by Broadstairs. However the chasing sportsboats were flying down wind and tide reaching higher speeds. Both were being very well sailed, but the Melges never quite caught the slightly lower rating 1720, finishing 2 minutes 30 behind. The easing tide strength nearing the change on the return to Ramsgate helped the smaller boats a little more but Flying Pig finished little over 5 minutes behind Assassin to comfortably save her time for a win by nearly 2 minutes. The Melges was another 1min14secs adrift in 3rd.

Non-IRC Class 3 was also reduced in size by holidays and crew shortages. They sailed a shorter course set by John Stoneley but also taking in Broadstairs Knoll. The 37ft Jeanneau Pippy of John & Michelle Stoneley easily had the upwind legs over Anthony and Peter Dale's wheelchair modified Corby 26 Bad Boys who were a solid 2nd with UFO 31 Manyana out of the picture. Pippy corrected a full 9 minutes ahead of Bad Boys.

Race 2 Results:

IRC Class 1-2
1st Flying Pig
2nd Assassin
3rd Lock Stock

Non-IRC Class
1st Pippy
2nd Bad Boys