Gul RS National Championships, 2002 - Day 4

See full Results on Y&Y website. Reports - RS300 To follow RS400 For the first time this week Weymouth Bay and the weather did not play ball today. The light northerly breeze was very slow to fade away and although it was a warm day there was not strong sunshine to help generate a sea breeze. After a wait of an hour and half a feeble southwest sea breeze did fill in across the whole bay allowing PRO Frank Newton to set a course. Race 7 got underway surprisingly after only one abandoned attempted gate start, in 4-6 knots of breeze. The start turned into a real late starters paradise as they found extra pressure with the early starters struggling to keep their boats moving. Mike Palfreman/Matt Radmore just led at the first mark from pathfinder Geoff Carveth/ Mark Greaves. Carveth took the lead on the second beat with Tony Woods/Amanda Pierpoint storming through into second place. The final run became quite tense as the wind became very light the leading three boats became very close. The Carveth/Greaves team hung to first place just ahead of Woods/Pierpoint and the fast finishing daughter /father combo of Sally and Martin Styles. Roger Gilbert/James Stewart, the dominant team of the event so far, were struggling in mid fleet and could only manage a recovery to 17th. With Carveth winning and Craig Burlton/Andrew Bonsey cashing their get out of jail card to finish 7th the Nationals were now looking a more open event then they had been overnight. The wind now swung much more southerly and firmed up to a 6-7 knot breeze. Again the gate opened without a hitch for race 8 and this time the early starters had a much better time of it. John Date/Neil Hughston led the charge with extra pressure and a useful shift to have a good lead at the first mark. They extended this lead on the second beat to win the race by a big margin from Matthew and Gary Fryer with Russ Gibbs/Jayne Singleton third. Gilbert and Stewart were in the leading group at the first mark to finish 9th, one place ahead of Carveth and Greaves. Burlton and Bonsey did themselves no favours struggling home in 37th place. With two discards now applied Gilbert/Stewart are still leading on 11 points with discards of 17 and 9. Carveth/Greaves have 16pts discarding two tenths with Burlton and Bonsey now a more distant third with 22 points. One thing for sure though with similar conditions forecast for the final day it will be a tense day for the leaders tomorrow and we could still see a very close finish. RS600 What a difficult day for the Race Committee and the RS600 fleet. After a long wait for the breeze to settle, the RS600 fleet left the shore in the early afternoon, with a 4-6 knot south-westerly breeze. The racing was instantly made tense by the use of the black flag at the first start. Five boats were binned, whilst Richard Smith led the rest of the fleet around the course. However, after an unfortunate mix-up between the mark boat and committee boat, the race had to be abandoned. The race was restarted in the same light, fluky conditions and Smith once again found the fastest way up the first beat, a lead he held to the end. Pete Hutchins held on to his second place with Colin Turner squeezing through at the finish to take third. The other 2 races scheduled for the day were not held due to the lack of wind. A long day is ahead for the fleet tomorrow, bringing their 1st scheduled start forward by 2 hours to try to get in as many of the remaining 4 races as possible.