Warsash Spring Series 2002: Race 3 A strong breeze was forecast for Race 3 of the Spring Series on April 7th and on arriving at the boat at 8am we certainly were not disappointed. On reaching the Solent we were greeted with a breeze of 19-21 knots. We therefore hoisted the No.3 for our practice and sailed the beginning of the expected first leg. We returned to the start area to watch the IRM and IRC 1 starts and although the pin end looked favoured for the first start by the time IRC 1 got away the line was much more even. With 9 minutes to go until our start the breeze was down to 15 knots and we therefore elected to start with our Checkmate Carbon Heavy No.1 rather than the No.3. Robin, Dave L and Rob combined to get a great start and we led the fleet off the line. Following our pre-race plan we headed left, loosely covering our closest rival, Fastwave 2. Unfortunately bad communication aboard caused us to tack too closely to Fastwave after they had hooked into a good shift and we therefore flew our I flag and accepted a 1% time penalty for the race. Both the 40.7s then pulled away from the rest of the fleet as the breeze climbed to 23 knots and we hoisted the No.3 again. After closing Fastwave down the exhilarating last run with gusts to 26 knots we were T-boned by an X-332 on the last beat resulting in significant damage to the boat, although luckily everyone aboard was OK. The result was a second on corrected for Fandango, not bad considering the 1% penalty! Roger Cerrato, Banks Sails Back to Fandango minisite homepage