Results / RS700 Winter Champs Chew Valley SC - 13/03/2010

The first event of the 2010 RS700 calender was the Winter Championships at Chew Valley. The competitors were greeted with bright sunshine and glassy calm water. With the forecast for the day suggesting 4-5 kts of wind; racing was looking doubtful. However the wind gods smiled upon the assembled fleets and a light breeze soon filled in.

For this event the RS700's were sharing a start and a race course with the Musto Skiff's in a re-run of last years RS700/skiff shootout. Results were taken for the individual fleets and also a combined set of results. The final results of the shoot-out showed the top ten to have a relatively even split amongst the 2 classes and even racing on the course.

Race 1 got underway after a false start where the wind shifted through 45 degrees shortly after the start. It remained light and shifty throughout. Most people in the fleet played the wind lottery and experienced most positions from first to last at some point during the race. Local boy and national champion Tim Johnson eventually won through with Mark Pollington in second and Rob Jones in third.

The wind started to fill in for race 2 enabling the competitors to stretch their legs a little. The conditions remained shifty with holes appearing in the wind in random places on the course. Tim Johnson winning through  followed by Jon Heissig and Rob Jones.

Race 3 was run in a timely fashion enabling the competitors to make it off the water for the start of the Scotland v England Rugby match. Jon Heissig won this race with Mike Dencher in second and Tim Johnson rounding out the top three.

Sunday greeted the competitors with enough wind to have the boats fully powered up all of the way around the course; apart from some of the aforementioned random holes in the wind. Stronger wind coupled with some big shifts also saw some swimming practice for the unwary.

Race 4 started with a strong pin end bias. The race officer had the last laugh when the wind shifted the other way after 2 minutes of the beat. The smug looks on the pin end starters faces being replaced with a grimmace. The top three after a hard fought race being Tim Johnson, Tony Dencher and Jon Heissig

Race 5 saw the wind increasing. this allowed the RS800's that were sharing the same course to start coming through into the RS700 fleet towards the end of the race causing a few barging problems at marks. The offenders names have been changed to protect the guilty! (Maverick and Goose). The top three for this race were Jon Heissig in first, Rob Higgins putting a complete race together second after showing good boat-speed all weekend and Mark Pollington in third,

Race 6 started With Jon Heissig trailing Tim Johnson by a single point. Jon was fast off the line and soon sailed into an unnassailable lead. The only question now was could Tim work his way through to grab the second place and bring the result down to a countback decision. Tim was in third place going around the final mark, but was gifted the second place when Mark Pollington caught a vicious gust on the reach to the finish and went for an unscheduled swim. Meaning that the final race finished with Jon Heissig in 1st, Tim Johnson in second and Steve Marshall managing to Gybe inside Rob Jones on the final mark to finish third and create a tie on points for third place overall.

After the countbacks were done Rob Jones squeezed into third overall. Tim and Jon had equal results over the whole meeting so the result came down to the positions in the final race. Leaving Tim Johnson as an unlucky second and Jon Heissig winning the event by getting the results when it mattered.

The next event is the start of the GUL RS Grand Prix series at Stokes Bay on 24 & 25 April; where a new format of two single day events is being tried out this year.