Poole Slalom Club Latest

It was all action on the seafront off Sandbanks with glorious sunshine and plenty of wind and racers last Thursday at another classic Poole Slalom event.

With a short three buoy downwind slalom course (thanks for the marker buoys Dave) with beach starts we mostly ran pursuit races- these are the reverse grid format so who ever wins a race starts last for the next race, and whoever finished last starts first, this means that whatever kit you’ve got you are not advantaged/ disadvantaged. Thus the racing was all about overtaking, and since the legs were short, all the action was at the gybe marks, and it was intense with 18 racers on the charge!

In the very strong tides though the marks begun to drift so we held a few of long distance blasts, culminating in a hack all the way out to Old Harry Rocks and back, through a fleet of yachts who were maxing out at about 6 knots when we were hitting almost 30! We also had a race out to a Sunseeker and back- all 40 metres of it with a head high wave off the back! We were faster than that too!

We held a fewadrenalin fueled high speedline starts which proved to be great fun for everyone, so we’ll try a few more of those in the future too- bring your watches and I’ll show you how to do them (I gave some tips on this subject last Thurs too) Seems like some of the line starts training and the intense racing we held paid off for James Dinsmore, Ed Britnell, Chris Martin and Roger Clark at this weekends UKWA at Hove where they all clocked some decent results.

Everyone had moments of glory in Poole Slalom with the variety of racing formats we held and there were lots of different winners, but the only losers were those of you who missed it- when it’s sunny and windy like that off Sandbanks, it takes some beating.

Forecasts are looking great for this Thursday too so the best regional racing circuit in the UK is just going to get better- see you there, bring a beer, your Doris and a BBQ, more info later this week.

Thanks to everyone for participating last Thursday, please spread the word about this series.

Thanks to Steve from Animal for the photos.

Watch this space, cheers, Guy Cribb.