Poole Week 2025, in association with Haven Knox-Johnston - Day 3
by David Harding 27 Aug 16:53 NZST
24-29 August 2025
All Change On The Western Front
If you like sailing in windy weather, the Tuesday of Poole Week was a day to savour. Some love the excitement, the challenge, the satisfaction of a job well done if you get around the course, and the sense of exhilaration and relief when you return to shore for a well-earned beer or two.
Others simply don't enjoy it, and would rather not sail. There were a fair few of those on Tuesday, leading to rather smaller fleets than we saw over the Bank Holiday weekend. For others it was simply a matter of having to return to work.
In a two-handed boat where the crew (or the helm) wants to go out and the other doesn't, conditions like this can present a quandary. The answer might be to do exactly what David Wilkins and Sean Murray did. David (formerly RS400s, now Flying Fifteens) and Sean (formerly Wayfarers, now RS400s) left their wives enjoying a day on terra firma, and joined forces in the Fifteen. A fifth place in the longest and toughest race of the week made it worthwhile.
No mutinies by any crews were observed in the dinghy park before racing, but no doubt Preston Redman, the Bournemouth solicitors sponsoring the day's racing, could if necessary be prevailed upon to insert a clause in any pre-nup or post-nup agreement along the lines of 'though shalt not be obliged to crew for me should the mean wind speed 30 minutes before the warning signal exceed 20 knots.'
The wind did spend quite a lot of the afternoon exceeding 20 knots, with gusts frequently into the mid-20s and once, on the Parkstone Platform, up to 28 knots. Wind-against-tide conditions kicked up a steep chop in the channels, adding to the challenge on the upwind legs and leading to some white-knuckle rides downwind. 'It was spectacular', said one ILCA 7 sailor who finished near the sharp end of the fleet. 'Big winds, dead runs, lots of capsizes. I'm sorry I can't speak any more - I'm no longer able to function. I need to go and sleep!'.
The ILCAs had a physically brutal day on a course that took them up South Deep to Amy Group mark twice. For the Flying Fifteens it was a day to venture even further, to parts of the harbour that have seldom - if ever - been part of a course in Poole Week. They were sent way out west, to the last buoy before the stakes that mark the entrance to the Wareham River. That was followed by a long downwind leg all the way to a mark off the Parkstone Yacht Club channel. The race was won emphatically by Crispin Read Wilson and his long-standing crew, Steve Brown, who was sailing his first race after a two-month lay-off forced upon him by a heart attack. It clearly takes more than a stent or two and a couple of months off sailing to slow some people down.
The Darts were another fleet to be sent on a long hike to the west, while the rest stayed closer to home. In the Top Triangle, the fast handicap fleet, sharing a start with the RS200s and 400s, flew around the course in style (most of the time). None seemed able to match the Melges 15 downwind, but it's the Contender of David Evans that leads by a single point.
Rolling their way down the runs, the XODs otherwise made light work of the conditions and are still led by John Tremlett and his team in X91, Astralita, now discarding one of their 2nd places from the first day.
It was a day of big waves for small boats, but several of the slow handicap fleet battled their way around, with Luke Lazell's Europe taking the honours to close the gap in the overall standings with Rosie Keats in her Topper.
Wednesday looks set to be another breezy day. A lot of sailors with bruised bodies and aching muscles will be out there doing it all over again, because that's what they want to do.