Laser South West Travellers at Starcross Yacht Club

Starcross Laser open © Mike Rice / www.fotoboat.com

Starcross Laser open © Mike Rice / www.fotoboat.com

Summer arrived with a bang at Starcross YC. Bright sunshine, a reasonable temperature of about 17C and most importantly a cracking breeze of 12 to 14 knots, greeted the 26 competitors who arrived for the second event of the Laser South West Grand Prix series.

The fast reach out to the start line, just off Lymnstone, was not without incident with a few succumbing to the gusting winds.

Vice Commodore and Race Officer for the day, Tony Blackmore set a relatively compact Olympic style course against a Northerly stiff breeze of about 15 knots, gusting to 20 knots. There was one start for the four 4.7's, twelve Radials and ten Standard rigs taking part. With a strong incoming tide tending to push starters over the line, the RO got the Lasers off first time with only one Radial suffering an OCS. All very well behaved!

What was to become 'the big three' in the Standard fleet, Paul Kelley (Starcross Y.C.) Charlie Maunder (Wimbleball S.C.) and Paul Bartlett (SYC), powered their way to the front of the fleet closely followed by Mike Kinnear (SYC) and Neil Dunkley (Saltash S.C.) in Radials. Biting at the heels of the leaders was Izzy Berkley (Durleigh S.C.) in her 4.7 and she continued to very cannily pick out the shifts on the windward legs.

The wind gradually increased throughout the day with it reaching 20 knots with gusts up to 25 knots during the final race of the day, with quite a high attrition rate in the Radial and Standard fleets.

'The big three' continued to do battle at the front of each race of the Standard fleet and it was such close racing and equally matched that all three ended up with a 1st, a 2nd and a 3rd. Paul Kelly was the fortunate one to win the final race, which gave him 1st place with Charlie Maunder 2nd and Paul Bartlett 3rd.

In the Radial fleet Mike Kinnear finished close behind 'the big three' in each race having battled it out with Neil Dunkley and Jeremy Naylor (Shearwater S.C.) and they were to finally finish in that order.

In the 4.7 fleet, Izzy Berkley really showed her class by emphatically winning all three races, with Jasmine Waite (Restronguet S.C.) getting two second-places to put her in 2nd position with Lucy Campbell (Restronguet S.C.) 3rd.

Overall Results: