Bericht von Gosport
Bericht von Gosport
Multihull Open Event 7th – 8th April 2018
Fast, Fun, Fantastic!
Well done to all the skippers and an enormous thank you to the brilliant team of race officials. After the success of the inaugural event last year we planned for bigger and better this year. We gained three more entries, including three who had travelled from Germany, and had an exciting day’s racing in the breeze on Saturday.
There were 12 trimarans and 8 catamarans. The fleet included a wide variety of designs, with super-low volume Shinobi tri’s, several iterations of Bluefish cats, super-light Mod40 tri’s and Ghost Train tri’s. Several boats were home designed and built. Some boats had quivers of foils to change sailing modes in different wind strengths. The two Scharmer cats could adjust their foils, and the Dann Fish tri could adjust the rudder foil while sailing.
Due to the size of the multi hulls – four feet long and up to four feet wide – and their blistering speed, the boats were divided into three heats for the racing. This made for more sensible starting lines. There were some very smart starts as skippers maneouvered their boats in the last few seconds, to accelerate to racing speed as soon as the signal sounded. Occasionally, individuals were over the line at the start but, due to the skills of the skippers, surprisingly few for the conditions at the time.
Racing was often very close in all the heats. As the day wore on the breeze was augmented by gusts of wind that saw some exciting hull flying and bursts of foiling where boats looked as if they were flying above the water. There were also the inevitable groans from the shore as there were capsizes! The misfortune of a capsize led to retirement if the boat had to be rescued using the dinghy or cost the skipper time waiting for it to blow into grabbing distance.
At the end of the first day’s racing of 21 heats, which enabled one discard, Mike Cooke, sailing his Rocket 3 tri, led the field by four points from Michael Scharmer racing a cat of his own design. The next five places were very close indeed with three points between third and seventh place: John Stones Shinobi Mod tri, Mike Dann’s Fish tri, Christian Engelhard’s Mod 40/2 tri, Andy Cleal’s Bluefish cat, and Pete Smith’s Mod 40 tri were all very much in contention.
Sadly, the weather on Sunday was dire! The wind was so light, with a forecast of 3 mph at 9.00 and dropping to 2 thereafter, that course setting was difficult. What little breeze there was moved from south-east, to the north, then to north-north-east and north east, all by lunchtime. It rained steadily and in spite of the best efforts of the fleet to race, sailing deteriorated rapidly into a drifting match.
Five heats were raced but as the wind dropped right away, a postponement was called to consult the local forecasts. Eventually the fleet was mustered and it was agreed to abandon further attempts to race. This meant that, as it was not possible to go on to race the A heat, the last two races of B and C heats had to be discarded.
Final positions were unchanged for the first three places, but the gap between first and second places had narrowed to only two points. Congratulations go to the overall winner Mike Cooke, with Michael Scharmer in second and John Stone third. The points between fourth and eighth place were tight: Christian Engelhardt, last year’s winner, moved up into fourth place only two points ahead of Mike Dann, who was one point ahead of Pete Smith, who was one point ahead of Andy Cleal who was two points ahead of Matt Ponsford!!!! Within the racing there was a competition for the over 60’s which was won by Peter Fothergill sailing his Shinobi tri. The runner up was Andreas Konietzny sailing his AC40 2016 cat. Congratulations go to both skippers.
Apart from the exciting multihull sailing one of the great things about the multihull skippers is their sporting rule adherence and willingness to get on and complete any penalties they may incur. This eases the job of the race officer and officials and ensures not only is our strap line of Fast, Fun and Fantastic a reality, but for all, the event is enjoyable.
Our grateful thanks to our sponsors. The British Model Multihull Association, as last year, underwrote the event. This year also the sponsorship from Argo Engineering provided a perpetual trophy for the winner of the event. The Argo tankard will be engraved with the winner each year.
Until next year……..
Jacque Cook
Multihull Class Captain