Joker powers to impressive handicap victory in division two fleet

Only one fleet took to the water last Saturday, comprising seven boats from division two.

It was a handicap-start harbour course event for the coveted Tic Tac Trophy.

The first boat away was Dunluce, skippered by Peter Bane, who skipped away to a handy lead.

Neil Worrell in Zuri, fresh from his win the previous weekend, was soon away, followed by Lloyd Pascoe’s Arkessa.

Next came Stephen Brown in Mary Maitland, with only Grant Tickell as crew. After a promising start, they dropped off the pace.

Stephen Lee in Flasheart began with Brown and was doing the better. Chris Oldham skippering Joker had his work cut out as he had given the limit boat 12 minutes.

Wayne North in his newly acquired Just Grace was given a huge handicap as its potential was unknown.

In the 14-knot south-easterly Dunluce and Zuri were locked together on the first spinnaker run, which saw Zuri just nosing in front of Arkessa.

Lee went well ahead of Mary Maitland, with Brown showing support for Ukraine by flying his blue-and-gold spinnaker.

Joker was slowly but surely catching the fleet and showed tremendous speed on all legs to find itself in the lead and claim a mighty victory to take not only the trophy, but fastest time in the fleet.

Worrell, the quiet achiever, took second place in another fine effort, while Pascoe was a happy skipper with his third-placing in Arkessa.

The handicapping was fairly sound as six of the seven yachts were all on the same leg heading for the finish.