Bruce Keen claims day two

The latest from the Musto Skiff Worlds

The first, and as it turned out to be, only race of day two of the Musto Performance Skiff World Championships got under way in a warm northerly breeze at 11:45.

A 1.1nm course was laid to suit a wind bearing of 025° at 17 knots, and the race got away on the first attempt.

The majority of the fleet headed left initially and then crossed to the right hand side of the course for a starboard approach to the windward mark. Tom Wright GBR 432 and Richie Robertson AUS 380 were overlapped as the bore away, very closely followed by Bruce Keen GBR 441, Ian Renilson GBR 449 and Marcus Hamilton AUS 453.

The breeze had started to build at this point to around 20 knots and both Robertson and Wright were caught out on the very fast flat water downwind leg and neither recovered from their capsize. Henderson was the first to gybe set and overtook all the boats coming in from the right by the leeward mark.

At the second windward rounding Keen had taken the lead followed by a very close group including Hamilton, Renilson, Henderson and Tim Hill AUS 424.

The breeze increased again on the final downwind leg to the optimum conditions for the skiffs, leaving the spectator boats in their wakes as they jumped clear of the water at times well in excess of 20knots!

Bruce Keen skillfully hung on to take the win from a hard charging Hamilton, who was again very closely followed by Renilson.

Full results here