The Elan40 "Deuce" made a great start and impressively led the race to the penultimate mark. With the tide setting fast to the biased pin end we ran out of room and made a disastrous start and spent the rest of the race playing catch up.

The Northerly force 3 breeze and west going tide gave scope for mistakes and just as I was starting to imagine penning you an apology for a 5th/6th place we played a couple of aces;

As we started the last broad reach, ahead of us, Deuce and two Beneteau 40.7s were "taking each other up" and down tide, with us was an X362Sport and a Humphreys One Design 35 all beating us on corrected time.

Unlike the opposition we sailed low allowing for the tide and made huge gains but probably only up to 4th with only a cross tide beat to the finish. The three leaders all stood-on on stbd tack down tide and by the time they tacked were in the lee of a large ship at anchor so had to tack back onto stbd and eventually reached to the finish on port tack.

"Kier Building with Flair" tacked straight onto port at the buoy, outpaced the X362 and HOD35 and caught the three leaders at the line to take another WIN!

"Deuce" (with John Brinkers of UK Sails on board) had her best result to date with a 3rd to Capitali$m's 2nd, but will be rueing missing a win.

Our sailmaker, Pete Sanders, has taken a little of the fullness out of the light No1 to good effect giving us good performance with 143% max size headsails. Interestingly Deuce gives us 54 seconds in 100 minutes due presumably to 150% headsails and a full roach on the mainsail.

Lucky Jim keeps his name!