After the weather causing the excitement last week, it was the racing and a collision of note for race 5. All started well for the fleet, with Judicious and Panache at the port end of the start and Moonlight at the starboard, the Whitesail boats all arrived at the first mark in a group with Judicious leading and Moonlight squeezing round inside Panache, but having to tack away on port after rounding, splitting the three boats on the beat to Kilmun. On the approach to Kilmun Judicious and Moonlight were at times on a collision course, but for the shifts just giving Judicious the benefit. That was until an actual port-starboard confrontation between Moonlight and Leander, sailing in the Piper class. Despite a warning shout from the right of way Sonata, the boats came together beam to beam with an audible thump, managing to avoid serious damage. These two tacked away, but almost inevitably crossed paths again, to repeat the situation. This time the right of way Moonlight had to lose out by going behind the port tack piper. Leander was given penalty turns, and in effect, resulting in her lack of active involvement for the rest of the race. The rest of the fleet continued with Judicious able to watch this from the front and rounded the Kilmun mark as the wind faded, but by now was in a different patch of breezes and stretched their lead. The wind was now much patchier, and the gaps between the boats stretched even more. On the final leg from Lazaretto to the finish Moonlight was caught out by a shift, turning the leg from a reach to a beat, so there was no chance of being close to Judicious on corrected time. Panache was so stranded by holes in the dying wind they elected to retire. Meanwhile for the rest of the Pipers, Sanderling, which had opened up a good lead off the starting line, proved susceptible to the fluky and variable conditions and fell foul of a calm patch off Kilmun to allow both Tom Piper and Billie to take up the running and the race finished in this order, Fergus Campbell, Stuart Brown and Ali Gordon returning to winning ways after a couple of weeks in the middle of the fleet to maintain their challenge for the second Series with one race remaining. Next week sees the final race for series two and a BBQ in the clubhouse to follow.
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