Musto Skiffs at Itchenor Sailing Club's Firecracker Weekend

 

The final event of the UK southern circuit took place last weekend at Itchenor Sailing Club (ISC) as part of their annual Firecracker weekend. For those of you who haven't visited ISC before, you're missing a trick: one of the most welcoming clubs in the country, great race management, and excellent facilities.

Saturday dawned with an early 10.30am start to get the tide right and an east north easterly wind with the course set just to the east of East Head. This presented a world of tactical options with the still flooding tide and the wind bouncing around off the shore, something that would be in attendance for both days. We shared the course with the 14, RS200, and XOD classes, which also made for some interesting tactical situations!

So, after four races on day one, the consistency of Barker leading saw Barker, Tarboton, and Oliver making up the top 3. The fleet then faced a leg-burning sail home against the tide to be met by a beer, roaring fire, and dinner at the club. After 5.5 hours on the water, it was a welcome sight!

Day two started with a bit more breeze as forecasted but dropped off slightly as the day progressed back to similar conditions to Saturday. Three races to test the nerves and the scores show that Barker took the win from Tarboton, and Oliver just nicked it by a point from Vincent in fourth. Some amazing racing right through the fleet, often with groups of boats crossing the line making life hard for the race team! A huge thanks to Itchenor Sailing Club, Roger Ewart-Smith, PRO, and his team for setting the standard on how a race weekend should be run.

Overall Results :-

Pos Boat Name Sail No Helm Club R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 R7 Pts

1st Sam Barker 653 Sam Barker Castle Cove sc ‑2 1 1 1 1 ‑11 1 5

2nd Land seahorse 4 Andy Tarboton Henley Midmar Yacht Club 1 ‑5 3 ‑4 2 3 3 12

3rd 652 Graeme Oliver Chipstead SC ‑6 4 2 2 5 (OCS) 4 17

4th Dreaded Third Wave 622 Dan Vincent Stokes Bay Sailing Club/ RNSA 4 ‑7 ‑5 3 4 2 5 18

5th Musto 629 Brian Greensmith RWBSC ‑13 3 4 ‑8 3 8 7 25

6th Sphonyonyo 561 Brennan Robinson Grafham Water Sailing Club 5 9 ‑10 6 ‑10 1 8 29

7th 469 Nathan Stanier Stokes bay 7 ‑12 9 ‑11 6 5 2 29

8th 631 Mark Cooper Burghfield Sailing Club ‑8 8 6 5 7 4 (RET) 30

9th 375 Joshua Belben SBSC 3 6 ‑13 9 9 7 (DNC) 34

10th 584 Andrew Gould Emsworth Slipper SC ‑11 2 7 10 ‑12 10 9 38

11th 499 John Piatt Stokesbay Sc ‑12 (NSC) 12 12 8 6 6 44

12th 615 Richard Smith Medway Yacht Club 10 ‑11 8 7 (DNF) 9 10 44

13th 138 Steve Robson MYC 9 10 11 13 11 (DNC) (DNC) 54

14th 323 Andrew Smith Stokes bay sc 16 (DNC) (DNC) DNC 13 12 11 70

15th 583 Lee Cullen Sbsc 14 13 14 14 (DNC) (DNC) DNC 73

16th 543 Stephen Wright Stokes Bay Sailing Club 15 (RET) (NSC) 15 DNC DNC DNC 84

17th 147 Alicia Biggs Stokes Bay Sailing Club (DNC) (DNC) DNC DNC DNC DNC DNC 90