Kestrel National Championship 2025 at Stone Sailing Club - Day 2
by Danielle Worsley 6 Aug 12:12 PDT
4-8 August 2025
Kestrel National Championships at Stone day 2 © Liz Austin
After day 1's race, which saw more Kestrels upside down than the right way up, we woke up today to some very light and questionable winds. Regardless of the windless situation the fleet went out and started race 2 perfectly on time.
Howie and Dani got a great start and flew up the first beat and rounded the windward mark first, followed by Chris and Kenny (who managed to round the mark instead of capsizing on it this time) then Malcolm and Dannielle, with our oldest boat in fleet 408 'Chicken' sailed by Karin Grice and Phil Aspinhall rounding the windward mark in an impressive sixth position.
Unfortunately the rules got in the way and they had to give water to a few others who ended up getting through them on the next leg.
Once on the run the spinnakers all went up and there were a lot of changes of places, apart from Howie and Dani who were just cruising further ahead of the fleet.
Onto the second beat and again there with many place changes, which saw Sandy and Alisa in 1632 stay inshore and went from fifth to third rounding the second windward mark.
Then the confusion happened....
It turns out Kestrel sailors don't know the difference between a letter E and a number 4. So we all headed out to the wrong mark.
So after a lot of going about and getting confused as to which mark we were meant to be going round all the kites went up again and we all managed to go round the correct course mark.
Sandy & Ailsa and Malcolm & Dannielle came out best after the mass confusion, claiming back second and third spots down the run. Howie and Danni had built up an impressive lead but they seemed to find a big hole down the run, all they could do was sit and watch the fleet come down on them.
They did however manage to hold on and claim a very impressive win for race 2. Sandy pipped Malcolm on the line to get the second, with Chris & Kenny fourth and Stewart & Ken fifth.
Unfortunately the remaining scheduled races were cancelled due to a total lack of wind.