WITH A Force 3 to 4 East North Easterly breeze in the main harbour, the thirteen Solo’s that arrived at the Salcombe Yacht Club start line looked forward to a good afternoon of beat and running racing, writes David Greening.

After a trio of restarts, all came to naught as the whole fleet reassembled on the way back from Saltstone at Tosnos Point, which allowed a few that had called the wrong side of the first fleet to get back into the game.

First to find the new breeze at Saltstone was Simon Yates, who yotted away into what appeared to be an insurmountable lead, with Tim Law making good progress to leeward of a large chasing pack of nine boats.

The chasing pack ran at increasingly high speed through the harbour as it approached Blackstone in line abreast. With Yates well clear, Greening secured inside berth, only to round the mark poorly, giving away positions to Tim Law, Chris Cleaves, William Wall and Simon Dobson.

Law eventually ground down Yates while short tacking up the Salcombe shore to take the lead with Cleaves working through to third place, and Wall behind. Then on the final run to Mill Bay, Yates and Wall carried on toward Blackstone, allowing Cleaves to move up to second and Greening through to third.

All in all, an eventful opener to the Sailing Club Series.

NO 505 out today means the fastest boats are Merlin Rockets and they sheeted in and John & Zoë Meadowcroft led John & Frankie Burn around the first mark at Crossways with a pretty fast Albacore with AJ & Tris Squire hot on their heels, reports John Meadowcroft.

There was not much time to look back, but the Yawls made it around the mark too. It looked like a NE today for the competitors.

The fast dinghies were too leeward of Tosnos Point and so it was John & Frankie who decided high is the best route. The experience of AJ and Tris said to stay low. John and Zoë were clueless and split the middle.

As it got slightly traumatic, the heroes of the moment were John and Frankie who got to the new wind, coming out of Frogmore first. They led round Saltstone first, followed by John and Zoë, with AJ and Tris buried.

It was a tight reach back to the harbour with big puffs too. Kite up and down, and in the end it was John and Zoë who got the best of this at Snapes Point.

Gybing down the harbour looking for pressure and John & Frankie got the edge again and had a nice little lead, planing into Blackstone. Time to put some rake in and John and Zoë closed the gap on the beat, taking the lead but losing it on the final shift into Crossways.

Nip and tuck on the run back to Blackstone and John and Zoë got back into a lead. Still another trip to Crossways to do and the positions remained unchanged.

The final run saw pressure came in from behind and at the final Mill Bay mark, there was a fight for an overlap.

Both boats dropped a little too late and this turned out to be race defining for John & Frankie who failed to drop and ended up capsized.

There were no other fast boats in this fast handicap race and John & Zoë finish with what looked like a 10-minute lead over the leading group of Yawls.

Photography by Lucy Burn.