After knowing that many of our Marblehead sailors were away on holiday, or preparing their boats to go to Italy the for the World Championship, I emailed my usual local M and DF groups to find out if this event for the Elstead Cutter was going to be on but there was a poor response. Paul Tickner wanted to sail his DEFECTOR 10 rater for the first time since spending a long time refurbishing it. We were able to check the mast position et cetera and it sailed OK, hands off, but Paul soon found a problem setting his new sails properly on an insufficiently stiff mast and retired early to sort this out.
Barrie came with his London MYC friend, Celia, who sailed his DF 95 with Mike Wilkie, who came came with his ace SOLO friend, Ian to race their DFs. A simple windward leeward course was set with a short start line to add interest to my Marblehead match racing with Barrie and the 2 fleets set off independently. The DFs recorded 7 race scores with Mike scoring 8 with 4 wins, Ian 11 with 2 wins and Celia 14 with a single win.
As Barrie, with his STARKERS and I with my UP are normally well matched, we had some superb racing together recording 10 match races, each finishing with 5 wins. Barrie won most of the starts, so it was a question of choosing the right shifts in the light to moderate northerly wind or sailing the best of offwind course to catch up. As Barrie won the last race, he won the event and Celia presented him with the Courage Cock, GMYC’s match racing trophy, which has only been sailed for once since 2015.
It turned out to be a very pleasant morning’s sail and quite warm in the sunshine as we finished, well satisfied by 2 PM.
On another level, in large entry international competitions where there have been suggestions that the number of seeding races in HMS should be increased from the current single Race 1, but is clear that all of the first day, 20% of the racing time, or more maybe in very light airs, would be in the mixed ability heats, where this sort of great racing between equals would be missing. That would be a big mistake because as soon as the fleet is divided up into 5 standard heats much better racing would be experienced between equals at every level, like our match racing today, whether you are in E heat or A heat.
Report by Roger Stollery 2023-04-17.
