Congratulations to Parks Blair and his crew Brendan Bennett for winning the event with a tie breaker in the last race of the day. Exciting stuff.
Here is a link to some pictures.
JO'S REPORT:
Eight competitors and crews gathered for the 39th James Match Race on Saturday August 28th . The all day event is a single round robin race with on- the- water umpires . The Club's 420's were used , and to level the playing field even more , the competitors rotated through each of the boats . This eliminates the chance of being assigned a boat that is exceptionally fast , or slow . So the only variable , as they say , is the nut on the end of the tiller .
This years list of competitors were , Paul Whitesides ,Martin Willard , Pierce Barden , Bill Smith ,Bill Raney , Glenn Walker , Parks Blair , and Tommy Allen .
By the end of the 6th round , or flight , the math was done , and there remained only two competitors and crews who were in the running : Bill Smith and his crew Tom had 6 points , undefeated to that point ; Parks Blair and his crew Brendan Bennett had 5 points. And the two teams were slated to face each other in the 7th flight . So if Bill Smith won , he would be the undefeated champ . If Parks won , he and Bill would be tied on total points for the day . In this match race , the tiebreaker is determined by who beat who in their individual match.
And so , it came down to the wire , with Parks winnning the start . Bill fought back , but Parks never let go of his very narrow lead , all the way to a very close finish .
Congratulations to Parks and Brendan on a great job on the water !
Check out the video below of the first leward mark rounding in the race between Parks and Bill
