Noble Marine RS600 Nationals – day 4 and overall

After an adrenaline thrilling day yesterday, the RS600 fleet were very happy with the prospect of 10 knots of wind in flat water from the north west! Around 10am, the bay started to fill in beautifully, so the fleet launched as planned for 2 races. As the locals had warned, the north westerly wind would prove to be shifty and tricky to get right, making our inland sailors feel right at home. Going into the final two races, there was lot to be gained and lost with our second discard coming into play once we had completed one of the races. With this in mind, George Smith was keen to protect his lead and decided to dance around the start line with Jamie Mawson from the minute the class flag went up. With a lot of pin bias, it got pretty busy down at the pin, with a few hitting the line hard, prompting the race officer to say it was incredibly close to being too hard. A good majority of the fleet hit the left side of the beat pretty hard, with a few trying to break away and find clear air on the right – which worked out to be a pretty good choice in the end. Jamie got stuck in the mix while George was able to get up front with Ben Willows. Towards the end of the final lap, Jamie had got himself up to 4th, but George was comfortably ahead in the lead.

Going into the second race of the day and final race of the Championship, George had comfortably secured his nationals win, with Jamie comfortably in 2^nd, assuming nothing dramatically went wrong now he could discard his DNF and DNC from yesterday, so the battle for 3rd was on. Matt Banbrook, Rich Bone, Tim Cutsforth and Will Russell all went into the final day with minimal points between them, with all but Will having bad results to discard. Off the line, Will hit the line fast and quickly made his way to the favoured right-hand side. Tim did something similar, allowing him to round the windward mark in first, Jamie Mawson in 2nd and Will Russell in 3rd. As they sailed across the reach and onto the run, the 3 were confused as to what the 3rd mark actually was, as a metal mark was perfectly placed in the middle of the run, conveniently the same size and colour as the actual mark! Will worked out the difference as they got closer, but Tim and Jamie started to round it and aim for Mark 4 before Will kindly reminded them they still had half the run to do first! After this little mishap, the chasing pack behind also seemed to get confused as a load of them all squeezed past the same metal mark before realising they still had further to go. 

Going onto lap 2, Jamie was ahead, with Will and Tim neck and neck, Tim rounded ahead, so Will tacked off to get some clean air, before heading back to the right-hand side. Rich Bone was managing to escape from the chasing pack but wasn’t quite close enough to be part of the action. Rich decided to tack off but nearly got himself disqualified by sailing through the 100/500 leeward gate. Realising his close error, he had to waste time dodging the gate before he could continue, making the fight for 3rd even more up for grabs now. It was now looking like it was down to Will or Tim to grab it, both with similar results on the table due to their consistency. Rounding at the top, Will managed to squeeze ahead of Tim by sticking to his gut of hitting the right-hand side, even though he misjudged the lay line and had to do a quick double tack to get himself round the mark. George had now got himself into the mix and was rounding the windward mark with Will. Other than George nearly binning it on his gybe at mark 2, nothing eventful happened as lap 2 concluded. 

Onto lap 3, Will had the upper hand on Tim who was chasing behind. To make it harder, Will went for the tightest rounding he’s ever had to shut the door on Tim and went into a high mode all the way to the lay line. Jamie and George had both tacked off quite early, but Will was confident that the right would pay again with the compass numbers looking promising. Tim tacked off, to clear his air and joined the other two on their way to the left. Once the fleet got to the top, Will had jumped ahead big time, with a comfortable margin between him and the other 3 who were all quite close together. Rich Bone had also caught up after doing a similar strategy to heading to the right while the others went left. Now Will just had to take it down the run and through the finish to get the win, which would help him jump up the leaderboard. Jamie worked his way towards Tim with his super low downwind technique, but couldn’t quite get him on the line, getting Tim 2nd and Jamie 3rd. With that, Will managed to jump up into 3rd place, with Tim into 4th, and Rich in 5th overall, with only a few points between them all!

As the fleet returned to shore, they were greeted by a Cornish pasty and huge smiles all around, the perfect finale to an outstanding event.

Thanks to our PRO Marcus Wilkinson and all of the wonderful Mounts Bay volunteers from the tally team to the trolley team, the race and safety crews, the bar and galley teams and those working behind the scenes on results and organisation, to our title sponsor Noble Marine and to our Official Chandlery partner the RS Sailing Store for helping make this happen – everyone had a great time!

Will Russell

Prize Winners

Report: Will Russell

Photos: Lee Whitehead, Photolounge

Results: https://halsail-1e484.kxcdn.com/Result/Public/91924