Strong tides with big wind shifts due to the offshore nature of the force 4 NElys on Friday, up to force 7 on Saturday and force 5 on Sunday gave 6 exciting and incident filled races in the RORC Red Funnel Easter Regatta.

"Kier Building with Flair" had a few crew changes, including sponsor guests, which resulted in some "unusual" sail handling escapades which proved that spinnakers are not much use upwind and genoas are! Enough said on this one. A careless glancing blow from the Ker 11.3 "El Gringo" breaking the carbon spinnaker pole did not help our efficiency on race 3 either.

The event is notable for allowing on-the-water-coaching from some of the Country's top coaches. Jim Saltonstall and Barry Dunning did the business taking film of all the starts and much more from RIBs and Committee boats and then gave a de-briefing lecture after the days racing, extremely useful input for the professionals and us enthusiastic amateurs alike. Another feature is that Jamie Wilkinson an Olympic yachtsman himself and the Principal Race Officer gave a running VHF commentary on each start. This was very entertaining all-beit misleading at times.

"Kier Building with Flair" had a clear lead going into the last day but a jammed headsail in the pre-feeder turned a 3rd into a 10th and we ended up 2nd by one point in IRC2. There was excellent sailing against the Humphrey's OD 35s including Peter Bruce's "Owl", Peter Schoefield's "Zarafa" and the eventual winner Tim Harrington in "Capitali$m".

Nicky and Lucy joined their 420 friends in qualifying for the UK team for the World Championships to be held at Hayling Island in July and then did a night trip from Hayling to Cowes in the Elan333 "Panache" with an all teenage crew. The same crew then raced against us acquitting themselves well in the bitterly cold Ely force 7 on Saturday and better conditions on Sunday before returning the boat back to Poole again in the dark. They showed great spirit of adventure and took on their responsibilities with much humour and fortitude. Twelve year old Kate was chief tactician with Mum and Dad on Flair.

We are back to Warsash on Sunday for the last race of the Spring Series.

Regards,

Jim.