GLAMOUR conditions greeted sailors at the Blackwater Sailing Club RNLI Round the Islands event this year.

A perfect 15 knots, from the west off the fixed clubhouse start line, gave the competitors an America’s Cup two sail reach start off towards the first turning mark, Ballast Hole, where the gybe onto starboard caught a couple of Blazes and a Laser out.

The first start of the day was for the medium fleet, 20 minutes before the fast fleet were due to get away, and were shown a clean pair of heels by the Blaze of Terry Crook.

The carnage at the first corner was a prelude of the action to come on the figure eight course.

The Fast fleet start was a bit more spread out with the skiffs mostly holding back, not wanting to be over the line. The RS800 of Ewan Harris and Jamie Hare had no trouble with timing the line and led by a good margin over the rest of the fleet into the first corner.

By the time the dinghy fleet had reached Osea pier it was obvious that most would complete a wet lap.

The main dinghy fleet winner completed one of the few only dry laps of the day.

The three-mile run to the next corner, the spit at the far end of Osea, saw the excitement of the downwind blast confuse a few competitiors who forgot to pull in sails or misjudge the wind shadow of the lee of the island.

A long beat covering the full width of the river from the Island to the Goldhanger shore followed and Harris and Hare broke their jib sheet and had to capsize to make the repair.

As the boats made their way through the gate mark over Osea road saw boats being blown over by the bigger gusts as they cleared the lee of the island, with one unfortunate team losing its rig.

It was then across the river for more upwind work through the back of Northey Island leading up to the final corner of Northey Causeway.

The final mile-long reach back to the club and over the line saw the Spitfire of Neil Mcculloch and Jane Arnold finish in just 49 minutes and 24 seconds for the ten-mile plus mile course, the fastest actual lap time.

Blaze sailor Terry Crook took the Medium fleet on the water podium place in a quick one hour, 13 minutes and 52 seconds.

On corrected time, Crook also took the medium fleet prize with the overall standings dominated by the fast fleet.

This year’s Stig award went to Jon Simpson, sailing his UKDinghies Musto Skiff, with a corrected win time of 1h 5m 36s, a good 1m 24s ahead of the second place overall Fireball team of Brett Townsend and Dave Nichols.

Over £380 was raised in aid of the the RNLI, with more than 50 boats entered and 42 finishers.