2009 Inlands Queen Mary

A game of two halves – or not?

May the 9th and 10th saw the Moth fleet travel to Queen Mary for the Inland National Championship. Not a great deal of wind was forecast.

20 boats lined up with several new boats including 2 Mach 2’s, a Ninja and a Bladerider FX. Mike Lennon led at the first mark with Simon Payne second but being in a city meant the wind had to come round a lot of building and few trees making any position tenuous. Despite pulling out a reasonable lead Lennon was passed again and again by Payne, Mike Cooke and others before eventually pulling through to take the gun.

Race two carried on in a similar vain with Payne taking an early lead only to have it snatched away before eventually retaking the lead before the bit that counts – The finish.

Race 3 – More of the same really except by now the wind was failing with bigger holes and smaller gusts, giving the fleet the Moth sailors nightmare of sitting in a hole while half the fleet foils around you. It’s a bit like taxiing for take off while the everybody else is airborne. This race was a Payne Cooke shoot out with Cooke taking his new boat way out in front eventually leaving Payne to play with himself while Cook took Ninja close to lapping 3rd place boat Adam May. The rest of the fleet was tightly packed with 3rd place up for grabs and lots of pace changing.

Race 4 – And some more of the same still, but getting worse, more holes than gusts and long periods of low riding (taxiing rather than flying ). Simon Payne took this race to give him a rather impressive 2,1,2,1 in very challenging conditions. Mike Cooke’s 1,2,3 enough for second overall and Lennon took 3rd with 1,3,3.

Sunday’s 3 race schedule was cancelled due to not meeting the Moth class championship criteria of 5 knots wind speed on the race area. Leaving Saturdays overnight standings as the final score.

Overall Results:

Pos Helm Sail No R1 R2 R3 R4 Pts
1 Payne, Simon 3381 2 1 2 1 4
2 Cooke, Mike 3382 3 2 1 4 6
3 Lennon, Mike 3243 1 3 8 3 7
4 May, Adam 3373 7 4 3 2 9
5 Adams, Alex 3366 4 5 4 6 13
6 Russell, Jason 8 5 8 7 5 17
7 Murphy, Adrian 4073 6 10 5 7 18
8 Roche, James 4103 14 6 6 10 22
9 Friend, Andrew 4102 8 7 9 9 24
10 Pybus, Doug 3043 13 9 10 8 27
11 Anstead, Chris 3152 10 11 12 11 32
12 Propper, Simon 4096 9 18 14 15 38
13 Ollerenshaw, Tim 3428 (DNC) 12 11 17 40
14 Toler, Sam 4092 11 16 17 13 40
15 Phare, James 3347 12 15 16 14 41
16 Owen, Mike 3172 16 14 15 12 41
17 Whicher, Tom 3230 15 13 13 18 41
18 Roclinson, Helen 40 17 17 19 16 50
19 Knight, Katherine 3021 18 19 20 19 56
20 Peuts, Johnthan 3495 (DNC) 20 18 20 58

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