Weymouth Doubles – this time winning the return leg

Last year we won the outbound Weymouth double handed race, crossing the line off the Nothe Pier doing 16 knots and hoping that we could drop the spinnaker before piling up onto Weymouth Beach.  We then dropped the A2 in the water on the race back and wrapped the sheets around the prop.

This year the prospects of winning the outbound leg evaporated when the wind went into the west off St Albans and we failed to extract the speed we needed to stay ahead of other, more windward friendly designs and finished a disappointing fourth.  But the wind remained in the west on the return leg.  If anything, the angles were uncomfortably deep for a boat with asymmetric spinnaker, but somehow we managed to remain close enough to the brand new J11S (a version of the J111 optimised for short handed sailing under IRC, with a conventional spinnaker to boot) sailed by Paul Heys as we crossed Christchurch Bay and headed down the Solent, to win by 4 minutes on corrected time.