Last weekend was the second event of the UKWA Regional Inland Series. I hadn’t been racing since last September, and had barely sailed my raceboard over the winter, so this was a good chance for me to find my feet again. (all photos taken by John Liddy)
XR-race feeling fast upwind in the light stuff
I wore the wrong wetsuit all of Saturday, so was pretty cold and wet in the rain, but the wind was ok, a good start and planing all the way round the first race for me with a bit of pumping. Nobody else could stay planing the whole time, so I won that one.
Mark destroying me on a port start, luckily I squeezed myself into an overtaking position and got him by the first mark.
We went in for an early lunch, and after a lot of rain and a big wind shift, completed 3 more races on a P course, which upwind then a downwind slalom: not my favorite, especially in light wind because there is now downwind run where you can gybe when you want and make tactical decisions, and I hate non-planing reaching! Anyway, the wind was from SSE, so it was very gusty and shifty and tactical. Some port bias lines resulted in some port flyers. The trouble with that is you loose out if you are not the closest to the port end. I didn’t get all my starts perfect, and I messed up my upwind strategy a couple of times, but managed to fight back to win all the races. I felt like I had pretty good board speed.
This kit planes in nothing!
On Sunday, the wind was from more or less the same direction, but much stronger, gusting up to 18 knots or so, which made for some pretty full power fun racing. Mark was his usual strong wind self and flying upwind. On the reaches (still a P course, but planning so fun), the wind was really, really gusty, which played in my favour, so I got him a couple of times down there, but whenever the gusts came through, he was just too fast. I felt really uncomfortable, draggy and slow to start, but I tweaked my sail a bit, and put in a smaller fin, and by the last race, was feeling good and won it.
Rob Kent was super consistent on his XR-race in all conditions as usual, counting only top 3 results. Unfortunately not enough of those top threes were 1’s and 2’s, so he finished behind Mark in the end. This meant that I won the overall event, which is a pretty good start to the season.
Raceboard prize winners: Tushingham took 1st (myself), 3rd (Rob Kent), 1st Lady (Annette Kent), and 1st Youth (Robin McAllistair)
The Rutland marathon was a non-counting race, and pretty fun. There wasn’t a lot of wind in the first leg of the course, but I was the one who planed the most, and when I wasn’t planning I could get the daggerboard down and rail it, so I opened up a big lead with Rob and Mark on my tail. Then we hit the strong wind, and Chris flew past on his formula gear. In the end, it was a bit of a battle for 2nd between me and Lee Marrs, who was on slalom gear, so he flew past me on the reaches, but I got him downwind. In the end he got 2nd, and me 3rd. Pretty fun racing, most of it was a reach, or a tight reach, so I’m glad I put my 52cm fin back in: I hardly had to use my daggerboard the whole race.
Just blasting in the Marathon!
3rd place, and first Raceboard in the Rutland marathon
