Murphy’s law was at full strength on Saturday for the last of the RS 400 Southern Tour. Having stared chilly enough first thing to have many of us searching for a fleece and possibly a hat as we hitched our boats for the drive to Lymington, we were greeted a couple of hours later by wall to wall sunshine and soaring temperatures making the clothing call for the day one of the trickiest of the season.

Sadly, for the sailors at least, this was the only decision of the day as the weak Autumn sea breeze struggled to do anything more than kill the light northerly gradient breeze. After a couple of hours of waiting the towering cumulus ashore continued to refuse to suck in the breeze  as the text books suggested it should.

As many in the 14 boat fleet started to inch their way back towards the river entrance to avoid being drawn out of the Solent on the ebb tide, the race officer pulled the pin and postponed all racing for the day.

Naturally, that was the cue for the breeze to come in, which it did with a glorious 10knot sea breeze.

With no more results to calculate for the Southern Series, Paul and Mark Oakey, who had diligently turned up with the intention of stamping their authority on the class once again, remained overall leaders of the series -  well done!

Sunday, Bart’s Bash day, (which was day 2 of the 400 open meeting but not part of the Southern Tour), saw a similar start to proceedings. But this time the breeze did start to build sufficiently to get racing under way by mid morning.

Starting in around 6-8 knots of breeze and building to a peak of around 10, the race officer managed to get four races in on the uncharacteristically flat water half way between the Lymington River entrance and Keyhaven to the west. With a strong flood tide the course was a rather one sided affair but what the racing lacked in tactical play it made up for as a test of straight line boat speed.

Competition was tight throughout much of the fleet but particularly at the top with Steve Restall and Chris Stubbs (1189) ending the day tied on points with Jon Heissig and Nicky Griffin (1407), both teams having identical score lines with two firsts a second and a fifth. But as Jon and Nicky had won the last race, they won the tie break. Rob and Jan Martin (1433) took third.

But whether you came away with a prize or not, in the 400 fleet we had all learned an important lesson for the future thanks to us sharing the windward leeward course with the RS800s. If you’re not laying the weather mark on starboard and there’s an 800 in front, don’t panic and tack, just wait until the 800 has caught the mark on their racks and dragged it to leeward for you.

Thanks guys, worked every time!
 
Matthew Sheahan