Please select your home edition
Edition
Ocean Safety 2023 - New Identity - LEADERBOARD

HYS Hamble Winter Series and One Design Championships

by Trevor Pountain 15 Oct 2018 20:16 BST 13-14 October 2018

Anyone who doubted that the wonderful summer of 2018 was at an end has had it confirmed during the first two weeks of the HYS Hamble Winter Series. Rain and plenty of wind from the North has had competitors digging out the layers and the waterproofs.

Saturday saw the start of the Hamble One Design Championships for J70 and SB20 fleets. The forecasts during the week promised average wind speeds of 20 kts with gusts in the region of 30 kts. In order to give the crews as much advanced notice as possible, RO Roger Wilson and the team met on Friday night to reach a decision. The outcome was that racing would go ahead, but with a delay of one hour to give crews time to launch their boats and make it to the East Knoll starting area.

Racing got under way at the amended, appointed time with twenty-one J70s braving the conditions. All seemed well until a Cowes based yacht club decided to lay a windward gate inside the HODC windward gate causing some confusion at the top of the course. Race Abandoned!

Negotiations with the Royal London as to where their buoys should be placed allowed Race 1 to go again. This time, despite two disqualifications under the U flag, all went well. The race team managed to get two more short races in and so at the end of Day one everything was back on track. In the J70s, Darcy, Clive Bush, was in first place with two seconds and third place, followed by Jelvis, Martin Dent and Eat, Sleep, J, Repeat, Paul Ward. Charles Whelan in Breaking Bod was leading the SB20s whilst showing the wrong sail number, with Reach Around, Christian Sutherland second and PB11, Paul Hine in third.

Sunday brought the IRC yachts to the Race Course for week two of the HYS Hamble Winter Series. As happens from time to time in the Solent, there was a distinct lack of water for Race Teams to run racing. The One Designs once again hogged the area around East Knoll which meant PRO Kathy Smalley had to disappear to Ryde Bank to give the main winter series boats a decent course in the northerly winds and rain. Fortunately, the committee vessel this week had both gas and sugar to keep Kathy and the team going in the appalling conditions. A couple of boats ran for home before the start, Mefisto, Sigma 38, Kevin Sussmilch, with a ripped main sail and Old Mother Gun, Philip Farrands with gear failure.

As ardent TV viewers will know, Orange is the new Black, and so it became on the start line when Kathy Smalley, with a sugar rush, announced the pin to be Orange, when of course, everyone could see it was black. The colour was corrected and racing began. To everyone's delight Class 1 got away cleanly for both starts, there being no appetite for an AP in the conditions. Sailplane, Rob Bottomley and Davanti Tyres, Chaz Ivell and Paul Heys scored a first and second each in the two races, with Skermisher, Jonathan Blanshard next with a third and a fourth.

Class 2 had a contested start in the first race with last year's series winner Malice, Mike Moxley, battling with Jago, Mike and Susie Yates, at the committee boat end whilst Hot Rats, Robbie and Lis Robinson were jousting with J Dream, Kirsty and David Apthorp a little further down the line. The order at the windward mark was pretty much how it finished with Malice just holding off Jago on the water, despite a fairly impressive round up under kite. Jago however had it on handicap with Hot Rats in third. In the second race some boats missed the wind shift so that those who stayed left made big gains, most notably Mojo Risin, Rob Cotterill, who took a satisfactory second behind Jago. Hot Rats, who spent Thursday in the slings with a heat gun on her keel, had another warm third place.

Those serial heavy weather winners, Chris and Venessa Choules, in With Alacrity, scored two bullets in Class 3. Cetewayo, David Murry's Laurent Giles Classic had two second places and Quokka 9, Peter Rutter and Scarlet Jester, Jamie Muir, had a third and a fourth each. Pavlova 3, Max Walker, had some drying out to do having run over the kite.

Although a number of competitors enjoyed the reaching that was on offer this week, it was not for everyone. Bertrand Malas was convinced it was no good for his petite Corby 25 M'Enfin?! Despite this he posted a second and a third. Meanwhile that old reaching machine Stan the Boat, Toby Gorman, had two firsts. There was a typical Impala tussle between Uproar, Andy Chapman and Two Frank, Oliver Love and Samantha Flint, with Two Frank coming from behind in both races to steal the place.

The One Designs were also experiencing the big shifts associated with a northerly in the Solent. The second race had a 40 degree shift just as the Boats arrived at the windward mark which led to a straight line spinnaker reach down to leeward end. This was not tactically taxing but the serious grins on the crew's faces downwind said it all. In the J70 fleet, which is also using the event as a World Qualifier, Darcy, Clive Bush, had three first on the day to finish top overall. Eat, Sleep, J, Repeat and J'Elvis were second and third. In the SB20s, Breaking Bod continued to dominate from Reach Around and PB11, but the biggest cheer of the day came from Andrew Bell's, Dark 'n' Stormy when they took the bullet on the last race.

All the competitors were keen to congratulate the Race Team for operating in the foul conditions and special praise must go to the RIB mark laying crews who kept going all weekend.

Full results can be found here: www.hamblewinterseries.com/hals-results

Next week sees the final weekend of the Hamble One Design Championship, the final Sunday of the Hamble Big Boat Championship and week three of the HYS Hamble Winter Series.

Related Articles

Hamble Winter Series 2024 Race Week 8
Miserable weather to finish the series At last, some normal winter series weather came to the Solent, for the final Race Week of the 2024 Hamble Winter Series, sponsored by Greene King. Posted on 4 Dec
Hamble Winter Series 2024 Race Week 6
Just like London buses, two IRC 1 boats came along at the same time Robert Hillman's Exuberant was the Committee Vessel for Race Week 6 of the Hamble Winter Series, sponsored by Key Yachting. Indeed, exuberant was how everyone was feeling, with the prospect of two races for the second week running. Posted on 20 Nov
Hamble Winter Series 2024 Race Week 5
Dunkelflaute sums it up "Dunkelflaute. The German word for the miserable, grey non-weather that's been draining the life out of everyone in Britain." wrote Quentin Letts in the Mail on Sunday, on 10th November 2024. Posted on 12 Nov
Hamble Winter Series 2024 Race Week 3
"This is Hamble Race Control, the race is not live, we have exceeded the wind limit!" "This is Hamble Race Control, the race is not live, we have exceeded the wind limit!" Well, that's what the PRO would have said if the CV, WetWheels, had gone out on Sunday morning for the third week of the Hamble Winter Series. Posted on 22 Oct
Hamble Winter Series 2024 Race Week 2
A weekend of one half Race Week 2 of the Hamble Winter Series comprises two days of racing for the Hamble IRC Autumn Championship, sponsored by Key Yachting. Early weather forecasts showed that once again we may have weekend of two halves. Posted on 16 Oct
Hamble Winter Series 2024 Race Week 1
Two completely contrasting days of weather The 43rd running on the Hamble Winter Series started with two completely contrasting days of weather. Posted on 9 Oct
Less than two weeks to the Hamble Winter Series
A good number of the usual suspects have already entered With just under two weeks to go to the 43rd Hamble Winter Series a good number of the usual suspects have lined up to make battle with their friends and competitors. Posted on 25 Sep
Hamble Winter Series 2024 - Entries are open!
The event will take place in the central Solent starting on Sunday 6th of October Entries are now open for the 43rd Hamble Winter Series. The event will take place in the central Solent starting on Sunday 6th of October and finishing on Sunday the 1st of December. Posted on 20 Aug
Hamble Winter Series week 8 and overall
Yacht of the Series Trophy awarded to Protis Mike Yates, JAGO, declared Sunday's race: "A great end to the series, apart from the cold and rain!" Cold and wet it certainly was. Posted on 6 Dec 2023
Hamble Winter Series week 7
One thing is for sure it was a bit grey and miserable in the drizzle PRO Peter Bateson described the conditions on week seven of the Hamble Winter Series as "cool but not cold." One thing is for sure it was a bit grey and miserable in the drizzle. Posted on 30 Nov 2023