Breezy start

Two bullets for Massey/Hillary on the opening day of the International 14 Nationals

The International 14 Nationals held out of Castle Cove Sailing Club in Weymouth started with two races in breezy conditions.

The first challenge of the day was getting off the beach with a strong onshore breeze. A number of unlucky boats found themselves battling the moored yachts. A few boats even dared to launch from the shallow water slipway, which inevitably ended in disaster…

Despite this, the first race got away at 13:00 on the dot as promised, while gusts of 25 knots ripped through the fleet. Archie Massey with Harvey Hillary and Glen Truswell with Sam Pascoe got away from the rest of the fleet and had a match race around the course; Archie finally finishing first.

The trailing group of Andy Fitzgerald, Richard Bone and Douglas Pattison were never far behind with a reasonable gap to the rest of the fleet.

The second race started in slightly lighter airs, the fleet had a great start. The path into the windward mark was very tight with Archie/Harvey just in the lead from Glen/Sam followed by Julian Pearson and Nick Martin with 4 other boats very close. Archie and Glen managed to pull out on the run while the chasing group continuously danced around each other down the run with Andy Fitz coming in on starboard to the leeward mark, but failing to get his kite down. The race continued with Ben McGrane and James Hughes managing to jump from the chasing group to catch the leaders and get a second by the finish line with Archie getting his second first and Glen taking a third.

An exciting day on the water, with the forecast ramping up for Day 2, time would only tell what the morning would bring…