The second race series of the year, supported by Westridge Golf Centre, has concluded at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club.
It saw strong competition across both the fast-handicap and Squib fleet across a wide variety of conditions, resulting in some very close finishes.
Early in the series Jon Evans stormed ahead in his Europe to claim an impressive four bullets in a row. The middle part of the series was defined by very light winds shaking up the order. For the final day of racing, the breeze was strong, gusting up to 21 kts from the southwest. The race officers set 2 challenging courses with the first race being a little over half an hour in length which was won admirably by Karen & Bruce in their Laser 2000, closely followed by Jon in his Europe and Neil & Mark in their RS 400.
The second race of the day and final in the series was an hour-long course which saw two boats sadly retire with kit failure. Even after a long race, the positions were less than a minute apart. Overall, the fast handicap fleet was won by Jon Evans (Europe), with Lawrence Baker (Hadron) in second and Sam Prime (OK) in third.
The clubs young sailors in the slow handicap dinghy fleet also enjoyed the water with some strong sailing performances across the series. The favorable wind at the start of the series allowed for some new sailors to join in the fun as Nathan took to the seas in a Pico with his mother Gina. Overall, Megan finished first with Nathan in second and Jack in third.
Moving onto the Squib class. Panther surprised the fleet in the first race by taking a momentous second place finish behind the ace sailors in Rhapsody, with Liz Whizz taking third. The following weeks of light breeze made it a challenge to race the heavier Squib, again much like in the fast handicap fleet, this meant results were changing with every race as Rhapsody and Kestrel traded wins.
The final weekend racing saw the long-awaited return of Fino to the start line, which was great to see, especially on such a challenging and breezy day. Icarus clawed back some good podium scores in the final two races to cement herself third overall in the series. Rhapsody pushed Kestrel all the way but just came up short to take a well-respected second overall, leaving Kestrel as the series winners.
Once again, we thank all our volunteers at the RVYC who help make racing possible along with support from our sponsor for the series Westridge Golf Centre. Our next series is the JazzIT Summer Series kicking off on Sunday 5th July with a first warning signal at 14:30.
