A pitifully light forecast prompted Royal Southampton YC to bring forward the start of the Poole Bar Double to make sure that the little boats would get through the Hurst narrows before the tide turned and only send the fleet as far as Christchurch Ledge. It seemed like a good call at the time, but the weather on 17th July refused to behave with the result that we were back alongside at Hamble Yacht Services in time for lunch!
We figured that the smart thing to do was to start on port gybe and head across towards the Island to get the best of the tide, which paid off and soon saw us leading the fleet down the Solent. We were overtaken by the B45, Kia Kaha, on the reach across to Christchurch Ledge. She pulled away from us as the breeze built to around 14 knots on the beat back into the Solent, but we kept her in sight as we headed back toward the finish off the mouth of the Beaulieu. We reduced the lead on the water to less than 3 minutes as the wind dropped on the approach to the finish, giving us a winning margin on corrected time of over twenty minutes on both Kia Kaha and J109, Jura, who finished third and took second place overall.
