Paignton SC Christmas Cracker - Paignton, Devon, 6th Dec
 

The conditions were quite light at the Paignton Christmas Cracker pursuit race, round two of this winter's Southwest Sailing series, but it was warmer than expected with blue skies and the fleet raced against the backdrop of cruise ships in the bay. Whilst not challenging at the front on this occasion it was a great showing from the RS Aeros with 8 sailors competing and 5 from the growing Paignton fleet.

 

8 RS Aeros (more than 20% of the fleet and the biggest class turnout) were greeted with a sunny 5knts. With waves massively offset and with lots of patches and shifts across the course it was as much a tactical race as it was a pace race.

Greg did the best of this for the first half of the race whilst being closely followed by local sailor Charlie Gilmore, however, it was the youths who had the last laugh with Sarah Probert making impressive gains on the last lap by cleverly playing the shifts and patches of pressure perfectly to catch right up to Greg.

As always a great time was had by all and what was nice to see is the promising future for upcoming youth sailors in the fleet as demonstrated by Sarah Probert and Mark Ripley. They who finished 2nd and 3rd RS Aero (11th and 18th out of 36), whilst Greg was the top RS Aero in 9th.