Etchell sailing brothers Ante and Nils Razmilovic celebrated Croatia’s world cup football victory over Italy on Saturday in true style – by turning out in Croatian team strip on the water to race in the Red Funnel Cowes Keelboat championship series on June 8-9.

And it proved a good weekend for the brothers too, for sailing their Etchells Swedish Blue and Mtu Mojana Umbwa Yake they managed a clutch of firsts and seconds to match the the 2-1 football result.

Race officer Ian Lallow, with a team from the Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club, was still in fine form even at the end of a tough week as PRO for the Dragons’ Edinburgh Cup championship.

He set courses in the eastern Solent, from a start line near the Fastnet Insurance buoy off Lee on Solent, and with a Force 2-3 south-westerly breeze, which went round the south during the afternoon, the windward/leeward courses basically involved a beat towards the Island near Osborne Bay and spinnaker run back out again, two laps.

Unfortunately for some of the keelboat sailors, it was not quite that simple, with the sailing instructions detailing a rule that on the X course boats must pass again through the start line on the second beat. Obviously not all of the competitors in the Etchells and Darings classes on that course had read their sailing instructions closely enough, and the race officers had to disqualify around a third of the boats for missing the start line second time round.

It was a good weekend for Darings’ class captain Giles Peckham in Dauntless, with two firsts, a second and a third over the two days of racing. In the second race on Saturday, as the sun came out and the Solent gleamed, Dauntless led the a colourful spinnaker procession of Darings out from the Island shore to establish an obvious lead. The gap grew and by the end of the second lap it seemed that Dauntless was in a different race, minutes ahead of the next Daring, Decoy.

Overall Results

Etchells

Saturday

Race 1

1 Bushfire (Jervis Tilly)

2 Punkarella (G. Bailey)

3 Icing on the Cake (Geoff Skinner)

Race 2

1 Bushfire

2 Swedish Blue (Ante Razmilovic)

3 Punkarella

Sunday

Race 1

1 Swedish Blue

2 Evelina (Chris Torrens)

3 Bushfire

Race 2

1 Mtu Moja Na Umbwa Yake(Nils Razmilovic)

2 Swedish Blue

Dragons

Saturday

Race 1

1 Aimee (Julia Bailey)

2 Chaotic (G. Jordan)

3 Reprise (K.Skelsey)

Race 2

1 Aimee

2 310

3 Reprise

Sunday

Race 1

1 Chaotic, 2 Aimee, 3 Apalala (Chris Caws).

Race 2

1 310

2 Aimee

3 Apalala

Darings

Saturday

Race 1

1 Dreamer (Perry)

2 Doublet (Syme and Richardson)

3 Dauntless (Giles Peckham)

Race 2

1 Dauntless

2 Decoy (Norton, Chaplin and Goodwin)

3 Defiant (Perry, Carritt, Kingsland and French)

Sunday

Race 1

1 Dynamite (Balme, Stride, Collins, Stephens, Dogilewski and Winton)

2 Dauntless

3 Decoy

Race 2

1 Dauntless

2 Dreamer

3 Deva (Dobson)

Sonars

Saturday

Race 1

1 Sonic Lady (Richard Palmer)

2 Pisces (Trevor Scovell and Simon Clarke)

3 Josh (Pete Matthews)

Race 2

1 Josh

2 Pisces

3 Sonic Lady

Sunday

1 Sonic Lady

2 Pisces