Pacer Nationals at Bough Beech Sailing Club

The Pacers gathered at Bough Beech for the 2006 Nationals, light airs and warm weather were the order of the 2 days, at this beautiful nature reserve.

Race 1 started with Guy and Thomas Marks in 1703, and Mike Warwicker and Kate Fitzsimmons in 2302, slugging it out up the first beat, these 2 boats broke from the fleet, the north easterly wind swinging up to 45o making the sailing challenging with big gains and losses to be had on every tack, eventually Mike and Kate pulled out a small lead over Guy and Thomas to take race 1, with Bill Banks in 1700 third, Brian Wells in 84 fourth, Russell and Aaron Knottley, 5th Sue Bowkett 6th Howard Cooke 7th, Robert Myers 8th.

Race 2 followed a similar pattern with Russell and Aaron Knottley 2299 taking an early lead in an ever decreasing wind, Mike and Kate pulling out a small lead with Guy and Thomas, over the rest of the fleet by the windward mark, Mike and Kate eventually sealing their second win with Guy and Thomas 2nd, Brian Wells and James Mulner 3rd, Bill and Laura Banks 4th, Russell and Aaron Knottley 5th.

Sunday arrived with the threat of less wind.

Race 3 started with plenty of close tacking in the now very shifty conditions, Guy and Thomas lead Mike and Kate to the windward mark and down to mark 2 with the following Pacers in close proximity, by the end of the second beat Mike and Kate had a small lead over Guy and Thomas, Mike and Kate pulled clear with Bill and Laura Banks, over hauling Guy and Thomas, Brian Wells hot on their heels, in the heat of battle Bill and Laura lead Guy and Thomas like lemmings to Port of a starboard Mark, this was witnessed by the chasing Pacer and a protest was lodged, amazingly the race officer confessed to not showing an altered course flag at the start, and therefore all boats had sailed the wrong course at some point, the whole race was therefore Nullified. The protest took all of 2 minutes as all competititors had reached the conclusion that this would be the right result.

So onto race 4, and the tightest race of the weekend, the first 2 places were already known but third was up for grabs between Bill and Laura in 1700 and Brian and James in 84-each had to beat the other to claim third spot, Mike and Kate sailed into an early lead and held to win, the race for second was to be very tight with Bill and Laura holding the early advantage only to be blanketed by the following Pacers on the spinnaker run, Guy and Thomas eventually sneaked into 2nd, while Bill and Brian battled for third, eventually Brian pulled out a small lead over Bill and held to take third and third overall.

Overall Results: