RS:X at Whitwell

With typical attitude the RS:X fleet lumbered onto the water but they were soon cheered up as they sat on the beach by the techno fleet all five of them having an awsome start, with most of the techno's and Connor Bainbridge upwind chasing the wrong committee boat.

With the wind becoming quite sketchy the racing became a little bit based on survival for me anyway, but I could obviously do with some lessons off Ed who was setting a blistering pace in all 4 races winning by what could be called a country mile. During the day there was a lot of close racing with George new to RS:X doing very well in the high winds finishing very high up.

With the bigger picture in mind the weekend was going to decide who came in the top 3 out of the RS:X fleet with Ed strange almost guaranteed 1st place overall but there was all to play for, for 2nd and 3rd place with only 2 points separating 2nd and 4th place this meant close racing between Jamie and Connor with ash on his 9.5 having an advantage in the stronger winds.

On the Sunday the wind dropped to a fun 6 knots and the racing became far more tactical with a lot of effort having to be put in. the first race saw a massive improvement on the techno start with the whole fleet managing to be there this time. The first race was a very light wind race were we had the joy of doing 3 laps of windward leeward course but after two laps no one really wanted to do another lap so Ali stopped for a little bit at the bottom mark in a vain hope that mike would shorten the race but he didn't so after a very nice 45 minute long race we finished had a 5 minute break and then went back into sequence with all the other fleets already having started during our first race. The second race was pretty much the same as the race before but with 2nd and 3rd 8.5r swapped between Jamie and George.

After lunch the wind seemed to have picked up to a comfortable 9 knots. And the 3rd race saw Jamie win by a long way then followed by ali and George. And finally the last race of the weekend was the tower dash with the wind becoming more and more gusty the racing again became more tactical and by the end the whole fleet was spread out down the arm because if you got a gust that you could plane in you would fly away from everyone else.
The weekend ended with ali masters 1st then George bowles 2nd and ash barrat 3rd but first 9.5. this meant ali masters won the cup series with an impressive winning streak. And it meant that ash came 2nd in the inlands with Jamie coming in 3rd after beating Connor by two places.