Flair IVs Farewell to Warsash

What a beautiful day to welcome us all into the Solent for the first of the Warsash Spring Series races in 07. With a delay to the start sequence to allow the committee to take account of a particularly mobile wind we were able to spend a good amount of time assessing our starting tactics. Boy did it pay off, working the boat into a nice Elan 40 sized gap at the committee boat end saw us and Astarte (First 34.7) get off the line cleanly whilst a few of our more competitors got involved in a dust-up just to leeward of us.

Having worked the first beat beautifully the light weight of the 34.7 saw Astarte slide right at the end of the first beat but another excellent reading of pressure and shifts up the second beat saw us re-take a lead that was never then threatened on the water. In fact the only frustration was watching Astarte’s phenomenal downwind performance as she closed on us again as if on an elastic tow-rope! The third beat and run saw us again covering the fleet well whilst ensuring we kept boat-speed despite the faltering breeze and we took line honours from Steady Barker (Bavaria Match 38) and started the finger-nail chewing to see if we’d saved our time on Astarte. It wasn’t to be and she crossed two minutes behind to give her the corrected victory.

All in all an excellent first days racing in conditions that are hardly the strength of the venerable middleweight Elan 40. Good boat-speed from our Sanders medium number 1 and Main ensured that as long as we kept making solid tactical decisions we were always going to be somewhere near the chocolates. Another mention must go to stand-in monkey for the day Steve Davis, who started his career (many years ago!) as bowman for the Flair team and having worked his way back through the boat once again found himself at the pointy end because of the regular monkeys absence (I didn’t know primates skied!). With gybe sets the top of every leg and some tactical gybing downwind there was always the potential for disaster but he saw us through with no real problems!

And so to the future: As the headline suggests this is Flair IV’s final Warsash Spring Series. There can’t have been too many boats with such an incredible record in the series with a first (and Boat of the Series), three seconds and a third in her five series to date! It is a credit to Elan and Rob Humphries that the only boat to threaten her dominance has been her smaller sister, the Elan 37 “Quokka”. It is also an incredible record when one considers that for all but her inaugural series she has raced with sponsors and guests on board! So where do we go from here? Watch this space………………………………..