2005 Cat Shack Shake Up Pursuit Race

The first major event of the 2005 catamaran racing circuit took place at Datchet Water Sailing Club on Saturday 15th January. Twenty Five boats, 10 different classes of catamaran from 6 clubs took part in the first ever Cat Shack Shake Up Pursuit Race.

Needless to say the home fleet at Datchet Water SC managed to field the most entries. Although, there were some intended visiting competitors who had to miss the race because of illness.

The wind was a light South Easterly that started off as a gentle 2 to 3 dropped to a 1 to 2 at times and sometimes surprised competitors with some very isolated whirly bits of force 4 to 5. It was slightly overcast but luckily for the competitors it was a very mild January day.

The first boat to start at 12:15 was a Hobie Dragoon from the Isle of Sheppey, Ivory Evans and Lizzie Laming had rather a lonely sail until the faster boats joined them but at least they had a clean air on the start line!

The busiest start time was the one that had all the F18’s and Hurricanes on it. Er-Bitz (H5.9 365) sailed by Mike Coulson & Viki Herbert came into the pin end of the line, tacked onto port and managed to thread their way through the rest of the fleet to get off to cracking start. Very few boats chose to go off on a port tack but it did appear to be the way to go as Mike & Viki managed to stay ahead of the other Hurricanes and their “start mates” for quite a long time.

Two boats from the same start time did manage to get through, both were F18’s, one a Hobie Tiger (1568) sailed by Andrew Taylor & Chris Taylor from Weston, one a Nacra (94) sailed by David Hazard & Clare Logan, these two boats were soon working their way up through the early starters.

The fleet seemed to break up into three groups, the front runners who were overtaking the earlier starters and even starting to lap some of them, the middle group who appeared to be having some very close racing and the final group who seemed to be having a great time enjoying the pleasant January sailing conditions.

The F20 (218) Mike Phipps and Dave Huggins and the Tornado Sport (413) Simon Northrop & Matt Young had a hard time getting through the earlier boats, but did manage to do so, although they were unable to catch the lead F18’s.

When the finish line was dropped at 2:45 the Tornado had just managed to get past the Hurricane (365), this led to finishing order of first place, Hobie 18 Tiger (1568) sailed by Andrew Taylor & Chris Taylor from Weston, second place Nacra (94) sailed by David Hazard & Clare Logan, third place F20 (218) Mike Phipps and Dave Huggins, forth place Tornado Sport (413) Simon Northrop & Matt Young, fifth place (H5.9 365) Mike Coulson & Viki Herbert, sixth place Dart 18 (7838) Jamie Lynch & Jamie Ferguson.