1DL - OMalleys Rum RC Landyachting Tournament

After the Hamble River Winter Series finished their racing the 1DL fleet assembled at Woolston for the O'Malleys Rum Tournament.

The wind was high and in practice many wipeouts occured while people experimented with differing amounts of lead and rig sizes. This action was greeted with much applause from the spectators who had gathered from Hamble and passers-by in the Woolston area drawn to this spectacle.

At 4pm the racing was set underway. Constraints on course size and the high wind meant that the fleet had to be divided into two fleets of 5 landyachts. 3 races were held for each of these groups with the top three from each fleet going into the Gold fleet and the rest into the Silver fleet.

For RC Landyachting the racing configuration is unique - windward / leeward races, similar to normal sailing but all on a much faster time scale. The prestart is a 20 second countdown and the races last around 3 minutes. This enables a high amount of racing to take place in an afternoon of sailing.

From the first rounds Ben Vines, Dane Ralston & Craig Mitchell qualified from Group 1 and Mark Jardine, Ian Moore & Ritchie Cunningham from Group 2. No-one was taking the racing lightly and even in these opening stages there was no shortage of close incidents and aggressive manouveres.

For the main series 6 races were held for the Silver fleet and 10 for the Gold fleet. With a port biased start line getting away cleanly was vital. Helms chose differing ways of achieving this with some stopping near the start and going with a couple of seconds to go, others came in with blazing speed and hoped a gap would appear in the line. Both techniques worked with varying degrees of success. Early leader in the series was Mark Jardine sailing GBR-1 'Intersail' with 4 bullets in the first 5 races. Ben Vines, Craig Mitchell & Ian Moore were all in contention but had collisions at various times which cost them dear with no chance to recover in this short course racing.

The second half of the series saw Ben Vines find some form to put pressure on the leader. He strung three bullets in a row and was looking like he could take the lead overall. Collisions in both race 8 & 9 put paid to this challenge and Mark Jardine won with a race to spare. Craig Mitchell sailing the newly veneered 'Shabinet' won both of the last two races.

Many thanks must go to Ian Moore of 1DL for organising the event and the sponsors O'Malleys Pub of Southampton for their donations of the prizes.

Overall Gold Fleet Results: