Clive Herd emerged as the overall winner of Welland Yacht Club’s Lowland Trophy on Sunday.
In this race, the format is changed to add interesting variations from the standard three-race regatta style.
For the start of race one, the competitors only knew the direction they were starting – with the course only being revealed by answering cryptic clues after the starting gun.
Neal Tack and Rebecca Slator, in an RS Vision, hit the start line spot on the starting gun, having opted to answer the clues and reveal the course whilst making progress up the river.
That gave them a big advantage over the competitors who chose to answer the clues first.
They hung on to this lead for the majority of the race, but Herd – sailing a borrowed Solo – did manage to catch up and overtake to claim the win by 13 seconds over Tack and Slator.
In third place was Alan Cox with grandson Buddy, who had made good progress in an RS Feva.
In fourth was Club Commodore Tom Bell with newcomer Matt Breathwick (RS Vision), with fifth and sixth going to Eric Murray and Reggie Saunston (Mirror) and Ben Parsons (Laser) respectively.
Gerri van Haren brought up the rear in his Phantom, having lost a lot of time trying to establish the course while controlling the powerful boat.
For the second race, officer of the day (OOD) Andy Prior chose the pursuit race format, where boats set off according to their handicap and the finishing gun goes after 50 minutes.
Murray and Saunston were off first, but Cox was soon catching them up. Next away was Herd, who was getting used to the borrowed boat and sailing well.
This left the two RS Visions of Tack and Bell locked in a tight race across the full 50 minutes.
With less than 15 minutes to go, Herd had caught all of the boats ahead and was in first place from Cox in second, both boats maintained this position until the finish.
Right up until the last minutes it looked like Bell would take third, but right at the death Tack managed to snatch it from him.
For the third race, the OOD had chosen an unusual downwind start and had added a chicane to the course.
But this didn’t stop Herd pulling out a good lead, which he kept for almost all of the race.
However the final ‘rule change’ meant that once a boat had crossed the normal finish line, it had to then ‘reverse’ back over it to get the finishing hooter.
This proved harder for Herd in the borrowed boat and allowed Tack and Slator to not only catch him up but take race honors by quickly backing over the line.
Cox and Buddy were always in contention, but again a swift shift to ‘reverse’ allowed then to take second on corrected time.
Overall, Herd claimed first from Tack and Slator in second, with Cox and Buddy taking third.
