Gul RS200 National Champs, Day 5

It was overcast skies over Weymouth Bay today but nobody was crying about the lack of sun; there was a perfect force 4 from the South West which stayed rock steady all day allowing fantastic racing conditions. PRO Mike Pearson, who done a great job all week, set a really top course for what proved to be a real action packed day. The overall lead had changed overnight with David Giles, who had been overall leader and Jon Lewis, 4th overall, both being disqualified as a result of protests between them. This had promoted Tom and Jo Hewitson to overall leader with a 2 point lead over Giles/Clark and a 7 point cushion on the Derbys. Things developed rapidly on the water. For race 9 all the leading boats came out the gate very early in a charge for the left hand corner. Giles/Clark and the Hewitsons had both made good starts and when Giles tacked onto port after a couple of minutes the Hewitsons tried to cover forgetting that Steve Dunn/Dottie Cormack were in their way. A frantic bear away from Hewitson did not save the situation and their masts clashed. The Hewitsons went into a rapid 720 but Tom fell out on the second gybe and the boat capsized. Now out of the race the Hewitsons played frantic catch up praying that Giles/Clark did not score a really top position. With the arrival of real fresh breeze there were some new faces at the front of the fleet. After their respective disasters the previous day the lard teams of Steve Dunn/Dottie Cormack, Ian Pickard/Laurie Dunn and Pete Vincent/Trudie Danbury were well clear in 1.2.3 at the first mark. Giles/Clark were in contention at mark1 in 6th. Mike Saul/Sophie Hartley sailed very fast down the first run to jump into second. The leading four boats pulled well clear and had a close tussle. Dunn though stayed in the lead throughout and won the race from Saul with Vincent just winning the Bristol battle with Pickard to claim third. Giles/Clark finished 8th which they had to count and in a bizarre twist although they limped in the 20�s the Hewitsons actually improved their position by a point now counting their best discard of 7th. With the Derbys now out of the equation it was a straight fight between Giles and Hewitsons. It was thus very fitting that the two of them had cracking early gate starts to see Giles lead with Hewitson second. Hewitson were through on the run but when they went round different leeward marks Giles/Clark gained the advantage again; Hewitsons were still second and the problem for Giles this was more than good enough for overall victory. The Hewitsons just had the edge downwind and got through on the final run to win from Giles with Jon Lewis/Paula Hall just beating Dunn/Cormack. This gave Hewitsons overall victory for what is an extremely popular win in the class for regular RS200 sailors in the last four years who have been very close to win the Nationals in the last two years. David Giles/Fiona Clark had sailed an extremely good championship in their first RS200 Nationals and will surely be winners in the future. It had been a great week at WPSA with all races sailed on their scheduled day, quite an achievement for the race team.