RS800s at Weymouth

James Date reports on the light winds and busy social schedule

Thirty five RS800s turned up at Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy planning on doing some serious sun tanning for the weekend as the mid week forecast showed not a single isobar within sight of the south of England.

Not even the sun showed its face on Saturday, let alone any wind, and to the shock of the 800 fleet the sound signal went to release the fleet as we all stood around watching the 29er’s who had been out training, rowing back in for their lunch.

The race officer proved us all wrong though as a 3-4 knot breeze filled in. Not ideal conditions for the 800, but with 35 boats on the race course in the harbour, the racing was always going to be good.

Race one was lead for the first lap by James Date and Mark Hogan in Sea Sure, but they were reeled in on the second beat by Steve Irish and Martin Gotrell in Magic Marine, Mike Lennon and Emma White, and Geoff Carveth and Craig Davies in Fat Face. Irish/Gotrell took the race from Lennon/White and Carveth/Davies.

This started a similar pattern for the rest of the day and a lot of place changing throughout the fleet, but with Irish/Gotrell and Lennon/White showing good speed and always pulling through the fleet to score the best results of the day; 1,1,4 and 3,3,2 respectively. Ricky Tagg and Roz Allen sailed very well in the tricky conditions to score 6,2,1 winning the last race of the day by a big margin. Carveth/Davies and Date/Hogan completed the overnight top five with a notable performance form Justin Deal and Sarah Marriot new to the class and making regular appearances at the front of the fleet and scoring a 4th and a 5th in 6th overall.

Day two dawned with the promised sunshine and a little more breeze that increased throughout the day and even gave us some twin trapeezing for a moment or two in the last race. Just about the entire fleet were nursing fairly severe hangovers after another classic RS night out on the town in Weymouth. With many people sleeping in cars and vans at the Academy, the dinghy park was not a pretty sight on Sunday morning!

The race officer had obviously not been out drinking with the rest of us and was keen to get racing away on time at the very unsociable hour of 11.30am…?! One very short postponement upon realisation that there was no one there, allowed some but not all of the fleet to arrive!

Irish/Gotrell in Magic Marine started the day as they did on Saturday with a convincing bullet, followed by Lennon/White, Carveth/Davies in Fat Face and Nicole Johnson and Rob Sherrington also new to the 800 quickly finding their feet in 4th.

With some real snakes and ladders to be found in race 2 of the day as the wind settled in and increased a bit, it was Tagg/Allen who kept their boat in the right place at the right time to take their second race victory of the weekend with Irish/Gotrell again pulling through when it mattered to take 2nd. Johnson/Sherrington’s day got even better with a 3rd. Paul Bartlett and Stuart Woodger having scored a 3rd in the last race on Saturday added a 4th to their scorecard and stayed inside the top 10 all day to improve their overall position.

The final race of the weekend again saw several race leaders with Ben Farren-Price and Martin Winter making an appearance at the front for a good part of the race. Eventually though it was Irish/Gotrell and Lennon/White picking off boats round the course to take 1st and 2nd. 3rd again were Johnson/Sherrington showing that they are going to be a force to be reckoned with when they have spent more than a couple of months in the boat!

Irish/Gotrell sailing Magic Marine took the event with an awesome scoreline, counting a 1,1,1,2,1 and discarding a 4th, not bad when some of us were struggling to stay in the top 10! Lennon/White were also very consistent with two 3rds and three 2nds to count. Tagg/Allen managed to discard their 13th in race 4 and be the boat that stole 2 races from Irish to finish 3rd overall. Carveth/Davies in Fat Face, and Date/Hogan sailing Sea Sure did well enough to hold their overnight positions and finish 4th and 5th.

Thanks to the team at WPSA for starting the races on time despite the lack of enthusiasm from a hungover 800 fleet, running 6 good races in less than ideal conditions, and providing us with bacon and egg sandwiches and tea!

Next stop Lake Como from the 21 – 25 July… Bring it on!

	Sail No	Helm	Crew	Series Points	Race 1	Race 2	Race 3	Race 4	Race 5	Race 6
1	922	Steve Irish	Martin Gotrel	6	1	1	4	1	2	1
2	1061	Michael Lennon	Emma White	12	3	3	2	2	6	2
3	932	Ricky Stagg	Roz Allen	15	6	2	1	13	1	5
4	1000	Geoff Carveth	Craig Davies	21	2	5	7	3	7	4
5	1001	James Date	Mark Hogan	31	4	7	5	6	9	9
6	1019	Paul Boutlott	Stu Woodger	33	11	16	3	8	4	7
7	874	Nicole Johnson	Bob Sherrington	37	23	12	15	4	3	3
8	847	Justin Deal	Sarah Marriott	41	5	4	11	9	17	12
9	943	Ben Farren-Price	Martin Winter	48	10	18	16	5	11	6
10	1050	Matt Adams	Jaemi Gebhard	50	18	6	18	10	5	11
11	818	Matt McGovern	Max Capener	50	12	13	9	11	8	10
12	1010	Chris Mayhew	Mark Stowe	63	16	14	8	12	13	21
13	1057	Spod Olive	Mike Warren	64	13	9	6	17	21	19
14	1055	Neil Ashby	Jeremy Davis	68	21	10	10	16	19	13
15	839	Alex Davies	Sarah Davies	70	17	8	14	22	15	16
16	967	Jason Smith	Julia Plumstead	72	24	24	12	7	12	17
17	90	Jon Partridge	Tim Smith	76	32	21	23	14	10	8
18	1047	Charles Coulborn	Nick Bishop	84	15	15	13	18	23	36
19	1013	Joe Turnbull	Richie Burlingham	87	9	22	19	15	26	22
20	1009	Paul Taylor	Julie Taylor	97	25	25	33	19	14	14
21	925	Siman Jenkins	Neil Arnott	97	20	19	17	23	18	25
22	929	Ronald Millar	Nigel Furness	99	7	20	25	20	27	36
23	956	Ian Martin	Simon Morris	99	8	17	22	36	29	23
24	915	Jethro Gebhard	Carinna Perkins	109	14	28	32	36	20	15
25	892	David Pyke	Robert Pike	119	19	27	24	24	25	36
26	833	Pippa Baker	Mostyn Evans	121	27	26	26	25	24	20
27	926	Alastair Shires	Penny Shires	123	36	30	30	29	16	18
28	859	Laurence Fearnley	Belinda Cole	129	26	11	20	36	36	36
29	930	Paul White	David White	135	30	31	31	21	22	36
30	953	Andrew Pickrell	Nick Lett	142	31	34	21	36	32	24
31	836	Derek Buchanan	Elaine Buchanan	142	28	32	29	27	30	28
32	854	Sam Sutton	Jessie Gebhard	144	29	33	28	36	28	26
33	898	Bill Smith	Becki McKenzie	146	36	29	27	28	33	29
34	899	Neil McLellan	Hugh Coleman	153	22	23	36	36	36	36
35	910	Simon Cox	Katherine Cox	156	36	36	36	26	31	27