Long Distance Handicap

A cool day today, but with a nice - but gentle breeze from the north giving an ideal wind direction at least for Long Distance Racing.

Eight skippers turned up today, two IOM's and 6 Marbleheads - a last prep before we have 3-4 of them heading to NSW for the 2024 National Championship.

With the format today, we decided to handicap the IOM's two minutes from the RM's and see how it went from there. Initially, the IOM's had a distinct advantage given the head start, but that was a very hard thing to get right given the changing nature of the strength of wind. All said, the 2 minutes was kept for much of the day, and all sailors were quite happy with how that turned out.

Ricky got a great start, having to drop a second place by race 4. His V12 is going beautifully and is a rocket downwind. It was not all his way though, with some RM's taking some wins later on and Andrew also getting in front of him on a few occasions.

In the RM fleet, Kyle, Lisa and Ray fought it out a fair bit until Ray retired for the remainder of the day. Rod Marshall came in with a fantastic lift on one of the races and almost took the fleet win on that race. John Hall also had some magnificent turns of speed in some of the races as well. In the end, the consistency of Kyle and Lisa's racing proved the difference, heading the fleet at the end of the day.

Overall results - Ricky Prices streak of high performance has continued and he is a very worthy winner of the day, with 11 points from the seven races.
Second place by countback - six points in arrears, was Lisa Blackwood on 17 points, with Kyle taking out third place.

IOM fleet was dominated by Ricky, winning with 7 points. It wasn't all his way though, with Andrew Wardrop winning a few races, finishing on 10 points.

RM Fleet was close, with Kyle taking the day out on 10 points, with Lisa one behind on 11 and John Hall rounding out the top three on 18 points.

The results of the IOM and RM Fleet is calculated with the other fleet completely disregarded in that race. ie in race 7, Kyle finished 6th overall and Lisa 1st, a difference of 5 points, but in the fleet race, Lisa was 1st and Kyle 4th, a difference of 3. This is why there are occasions where a skipper may finish higher overall and another skipper may finish above them in the fleet race - such as it was between Lisa and Kyle today.

Coming up

Wednesday is Mid Week IOM Handicap at the Dam, button press at 11am

Next Sunday is scheduled DF95 Scratch, at the dam, button press at 10am. For those of us that are MBYC members as well, a reminder that the MBYC AGM is on next Sunday as well (3pm)

Kyle