First ever Long Distance Race at Abersoch Sailing Club
by Ian Middleton 17 Aug 2019 13:43 UTC
11 August 2019
Long Distance Race at Abersoch © Ian Middleton
Sunday 11th August saw the first ever Abersoch SC long-distance race taking place. Despite a difficult westerly offshore breeze, OOD Andy Teague set an exciting course spanning from the St Tudwals Islands to Llanbedrog head, incorporating plenty of exciting reaches much to the excitement of the ten starters.
The race started in an unconventional manner with a Le Mans-style start. All competitors had their boats in the water ready to go and with one big blast of the hooter, they were away! The lighter, shifty conditions close to the beach meant there was plenty of separation between the fleet by the first mark.
Ian Middleton sailing a D-Zero and Charlie Ball in a Laser got away quickly and established themselves a solid lead. By the LLandbedrog headland buoy, Ian had planed into a 3 minute lead. Dropping through the moorings to find the next mark, Ian lost time having to run to it; Charlie planed to it.
They had battled around the bay, taking just on an hour to complete and on handicap Charlie came out on top by 42 seconds with Ian finishing in second place.
However, the performance of the day has to go to Tom and Nat Pritchard-Jones in their RS Feva XL. In their first-ever ASC race (which also happened to be the first time they had ever sailed together!) they took a fantastic third place!
The race also saw a hotly competitive battle between three RS200s which ended with all three boats finishing within 49 seconds of each other. John and Alice Edwards finished in fourth as the first RS200, whilst an incredible last beat saw Ben Teague and Ottie Pritchard (who was sailing an asymmetric boat for the first time) hunt down Mike Casey and Mark Lind, beating them by 7 seconds.
After the disappointment of last year with the race getting blown off, the first instalment of the Abersoch Long-Distance Race was one to be remembered and was enjoyed by all. Bring on next year! Invites to all.
Full results at abersochsailingclub.org/results