Manx Sail Racer

Report by Olaf O’Day

With a gale on Saturday night and a large residual swell in the Bay, racing once again took place inside the breakwater for the final two races of the October series.

Only five boats took part this week, but encouragingly two were new competitors and with more boats appearing in the boat park we hope eventually to have a good turnout.

With winds blowing down from Cregneash, conditions were, once again, very tricky and there were lots of capsizes and ‘inverse capsizes’, i.e. when the wind stops and the crew fall out of the boat backwards!

Ali Hinds handled these conditions best with 2 wins, enough to secure the cup for this series. The desperate Dans (Boyes and Roberts) had a second and a third, as did Ben Swindlehurst who will never trust Velcro again after spending 10 minutes in the briny sorting out the clew of his mainsail.

Thanks again to the safety boat men, who spent the morning taking pictures of dagger boards.

Full range of Dave Kneale’s pictures are available on the MSR Gallery

Results

Race 1

1. Hinds (Laser Radial)
2. Boyes and Roberts (Fireball)
3. Swindlehurst (Laser Radial)
4. Whitehead (Laser Radial)
5. DNS. Copes (Scorpion)

Race 2

1. Hinds (Laser Radial)
2. Swindlehurst (Laser Radial)
3. Boyes and Roberts (Fireball)
4. Copes (Scorpion)
5. Whitehead (Laser Radial)