Paine wins the Sotheby’s Trophy
GEORGE - The first race day at the George Lakes Yacht Club this year could resume last Sunday in good wind of 10 to 15 knots. All three scheduled races, counting for the Sotheby's Trophy, could be sailed.
In the first series of races for this trophy, sailed in November, James Hellstrom was leading in the senior fleet, but he wasn’t around to defend his lead.
In all three races the team of David Laing and Anthony Alant were able to sail their Fireball well ahead of the rest of the fleet, but just not quite enough to beat the Lasers and Dabchicks against class ratings.
In the first race the Dabchicks of Luke de Villiers and Jordyn Soldin were just ahead of the Laser of Malcolm Osborne at the first mark with Matthew de Villiers and Henry Paine a bit further back. During the race Osborne was able to pass the Dabchicks, but De Villiers got delayed due to a capsize. Paine succeeded in catching up during the race to pass Osborne in the final leg to the finish.
On class ratings the Dabchicks performed the best with Soldin being the race winner, ahead of De Villiers and Paine.
In race two Paine had the lead over the rest. Matthew de Villiers had to retire during the race due to an equipment problem. Luke de Villiers established a lead ahead of Soldin. Paine finished the race less than two minutes behind the Fireball to take the race win, with the Dabchicks of De Villiers and Soldin second and third on corrected time.
In the third race De Villiers and Paine were competing for the lead until Paine used better tactics on windshifts to pull ahead. He finished over three minutes behind the Laing Fireball, still enough to secure the race win.
Matthew de Villiers got second place ahead of Jordyn Soldin.
In the series of six races, Henry Paine is the winner of the Sotheby's Trophy for the 2020/2021 season.
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Lakes Yacht Club, see its website, www.glyc. org.za or like its Facebook page GLYC.