Jeepster wins the May Weekend Series but finishes with high drama.

Saturdays racing in around 18 knots of breeze ended all square following a win each for the two J109S in great sailing conditions. The conditions deteriorated for Sundays racing with gusts up to 26 knots, rain and a much colder air temperature. Jeepster selected the smaller No4 headsail with Jetstream opting to manage the larger no3 headsail. Jeepster was just ahead at the weather mark, but in these conditions handling the spinnakers was always going to be tricky

and Jetstream suffered from the halyard fouled with the furling line (bowman Gavin failed dismally to provide an explanation in the bar following racing), which cost them vital seconds on the run, yielding a win in race 1 to Jeepster who managed the course without incident.

There was a very determined start to the second race and both boats found themselves on course side prematurely and tacked back. Once in position, Jeepster opted to gybe back to course resulting in the loss overboard of local lad Iwan who is new to racing and promises to hold on tighter next time! Recovery took about 3 minutes in cold and gusty conditions, the lad was pretty exhausted by the time he was brought back on board and Jeepster retired from the race to get him ashore as quickly as possible. There were some lessons to be learnt from both the casualty and recovery perspective, and in particular the benefit of either automatically inflatable life jackets or a flotation vest, in lieu of a manually inflatable jacket.

Generously, Jetstream also retired from the course and closely monitored the recovery, and with two medics on board assistance was promptly offered, but thankfully not required.

Final Results  12:17 on May 12, 2013

IRC Class

 Sailed: 3, Discards: 0, To count: 3, Rating system: IRC, Entries: 2, Scoring system: Appendix A

R1 - IRC Class

R2 - IRC Class

R3 - IRC Class

Sailwave Scoring Software 2.9.7