Hi, hope you dont mind a bit of self publicising but a racers view has to be given !! Facts from the race as i saw it, We GBR413 led fairly soon after the start and held the lead for about 20-30 minutes we were passed just before the lighthouse by 3 teams, 2 eale 20s (Bousholte being the first one), and actually the 1st boat round the lighthouse looked to be the A class of Lambrieux (i cant confirm this fact as we were concentrating on making the gate ourselves) the next leg a run to VC saw us and the eagles power away from the A-Cat so at v.c it was the 2 eagles and our Torn 3rd with the M20 4th, the next leg a tight reach to oudeschild saw us take the 2nd eagle with the 1st eagle establishing a 200 metre lead, after this gate the POR Tornado team came at at us and we held them off untill the southern tip of the island where they squeezed past. Next up a beat to the finish, with both torns grinding down the eagles lead Hans had enough of alead to hold on by a couple of minutes with us and the other tornado swapping 2nd and 3rd all the way to the finish with us just losing out on the last tack to the line by 20 secs with the next boat in the M20 3 mins later. On handicap mitch booth won and 8 F18s finished int the top ten (POR 7th us 9th) although there is some confusion about the OCS decisions (i dont know the facts about that at all) I hope that clears up the race a bit although i havent seen the TV or internet coverage i think it must be hard to give GPS tracking systems to everyone that could win as from 600 starters your going to miss someone out, its probably unfortunate that 2 out of the top 3 didnt have them and the one that did have one malfunctioned.
As a final note i would like to say well done to the Texel Organisation for another brilliant event.
Simon Northrop/Matt Young GBR413 UK
Team www.sandybags.com