Gul RS800 National Champs, Day 2

RS800 What a difference a day makes! Skiff style racing once again returned to the RS 800 Nationals as the wind, still blowing out of the North, North- east, increased from yesterdays Force 2-3 to today�s excellent force 4-5. With this forecast the race team chose to race inside Portland Harbour, so with shorter courses and more laps a heavy emphasis was placed on the top crews boat-handling. This also resulted in some excellent, close racing with no quarter given amongst the 62-boat fleet. The first race of the day, finally got away after the black flag rule had been introduced, but not without Garda winner Lee Sydenham being over along with a number of others. Geoff Carveth and Craig Davies led the charge to the harbour wall on the right of the course and manage to lead round the first mark from a pack of boats. Behind him the fleet from 2nd to 8th changed places all the time with Carveth slowly increasing his lead to win from Steve Irish and Martin Gotrel with Chris Howarth third. Overnight leader Mike Lennon and Nicky Griffin moved steadily through the fleet from a first mark position of late thirties having sailed up the middle of the course. They eventually finished twelfth. To make amends for the first race of the day Mike Lennon punched out of another black flag start to win the right hand side and lead at the top mark. Richard Lovering made a spectacular port tack approach and just squeezed round, with the consequences not mattering as he had already fallen foul of the black flag with an OCS. The chasing pack of James Date, Ricky Tagg, and Alan Olive all traded places with the ever consistent Date and Mark Hogan finally getting a second place to go with their 2, 5 and 7 and put them in second place behind Lennon going into day three. First race winner Geoff Carveth had a few boat handling issues along with many others at the leeward mark and finished eighth, so leaving the Championship wide open three days yet to go.