Wednesday morning at Doom Bar Salcombe Merlin Week was again bright and sunny but with a stronger Northwesterly blowing, meaning the start was going to be to the North and the best conditions would be up the estuary towards Kingsbridge. With the wind coming over the town, the harbour section was a minefield of vertical bomb gusts and windless holes.
Race 7 – Blue v Black flights. NW Force 3-4, Course 7,5,7,1,3,1
With the fleet unable to cross the line on starboard, the winning move was to get onto port early, but not too early as Matt Biggs and John Hackett found to their cost. The teams who started in the middle of the line were best away hooking into breeze coming out of Batson creek. Taxi and Ellie Bremmer led the charge to The Bag ahead of Richard Whitworth and Nick Copsey. By the time they had returned from their tour of the estuary, they had been joined by Tom Stewart and Phil Dalby who took the lead with Olly Turner and Alex Warren fast catching the leaders. These leading four battled through two loops of the harbour minefield, swapping places regularly. Ultimately Taxi and Ellie took the lead at the final stage ahead of Richard and Nick with Olly and Alex third. Tom and Phil found a couple of snakes at the wrong time to drop back to fourth, finishing in a dead heat with Anthony and Jo Gifford.
Race 8 – Red v Green fleets, NW Force 3-5, Course 8,6,5,7,2,3,2
Conditions were exactly the same for the afternoon race and the same start tactics worked with Tim Fells and Chris Downham making up for their OCS on Wednesday by nailing the start in the middle of the line. They led up through The Bag on the long beat to Kingsbridge but were passed by Peter Ballantine and Sandy Ramus who played the shifts to perfection to lead at the windward mark from Mike Calvert and Ian Garwood. On the breezy circuit of the top of the Estuary, Tim and Chris retook the lead and were able to extend to a comfortable second bullet of the week. Behind them it was anything but comfortable. With huge gusts hammering the harbour section it was a wild and crazy end to the race. Navigating through the minefield, Jon Gorringe and Nikki Bass grabbed second ahead of Mike and Ian with Jen Taylor and guest crew Tom Pygall an excellent fourth.
Overall, Olly and Alex have taken the lead from Dave and Pippa. Everyone in the top 10 will feel they have a chance of taking the week and each has a bad race result they will not want to count. All to play for!
