Results / Winter Championships Leigh & Lowton SC - 17/03/2012

A red hot fleet of 54 boats and weather that became increasingly bizarre as the weekend progressed was the recipe for one of the most open events in many a year. It also saw all the top 10 record higher scores than the Zimbabwe top order did in the Test match, wit no one having a clue what had won. A point emphasised by Dave and Nicky Derby�s genuine surprise when, at the prize-giving, they were announced the winners with 29 points; only one other boat managed 5 top 10 results. The depth of the fleet was demonstrated by 28 boats recording top 10 results, and National Champions, Tom & Jo Hewitson counting results of 13, 11 and 25. Every leading boat could claim they could have won with bad luck and what if stories. Saturday�s racing started with a really good force 4 from the West, and the classic Lee-on-Solent short chop. Lee Sydenham/Anne Vaudray were majestic in the first race to lead from start to finish with Hamish Calder/Severine Rees-Jones, Pete Vincent/Louisa Fewtrell and David Giles/Fiona Cark 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Jon Lewis/Millie Parsons shook off the early challenge of Paul Dorer/Ian Robertson to score an emphatic win from the Hewitsons, Dorer and Vincent in race 2. The wind now started to drop quickly, so race 3 was held in a force 2 with the tide turning. You had to go right up the first beat and Hamish Walker/Caroline Eyre, Steve Dunn/Harriett Edwards did this to perfection to be clear 1.2 with Ian Pickard/Lucy Matthews, Giles/Clark on 3rd and 4th. After the RS Ball everything seemed nice on Sunday morning until you launched. Then the big black clouds rolled up the Solent and played havoc with the wind. A shift seemed to hit every 45 minutes, and the poor race officer shifted marks for England; setting up windward legs which varied from 210 to 330 degrees, and back again within 30 minutes. Race 4 started in a gentle force 2 with Lee Sydenham leading. The front pack went right into falling breeze on the first run, and then watched in horror as anyone who gybed early found huge planning gusts under the front edge of a nasty cloud that took them to the leeward mark. Walker/Eyre must have thought Christmas had arrived early as they, in a cloud of spray, shot into the lead. Behind was carnage as boats capsized everywhere as the wind rose from force1-2 to 5 in the blink of an eye. Walker won from James Stewart/Elaine Turner and Jane Robertson/Helen Rollinson, with Giles and Sydenham impressively recovering to 4th and 6th. The challenge of overnight leaders, Pickard/Matthews, disappeared in a rum & coke induced haze with a soggy 34th. Race 5 did not exactly give the fleet chance to recover, after a long wait for the wind to settle everything seemed pleasant in a force 2 and sunshine at the start. Giles/Clark led but somehow capsized in a hole on a light wind run. Then for he final lap a very large cloud meant you had to go right, sit out and get very wet in heavy rain with a planning reach to the finish. The Derbys won from Walker, Dunn, and Chris Trainer/Bev Jordan. Walker/Eyre were now ahead overall, but everyone had a discard they did not want to write home about, so it was down to the last race. With the wind now from the NW, the beat was against a strong tide. Calder and Vincent had the best starts and were 2.3 behind Phil Sowden and 11 year old Daniel Sowden at the first mark but none of these counted in overall victory terms. Calder led up the 2bd beat, but then the wind switched off. The Sowdens and Mark Dencher/Anna Harding sailed around Calder in more zephyrs, the front 4 inched their way around the windward mark to rush downwind with the tide. The rest of the fleet was slowly moving backwards away from the mark. Just when it looked like the time limit was going to come into play, a new breeze allowed everyone to reach to the windward mark. The Sowdens won, young Daniel now thinking this open meeting lark a real doddle, with Vincent sneaking second at the death from Dencher. The ever consistent Derbys finished 7th, with Giles and Sydenham in 8.14, and Walker a distant 24th and now having to count a 14th. This gave the Derbys overall victory by 2 point only.