THE Holiday Race Series continued at Clacton Sailing Club.

The latest race took place in gusty offshore winds, which challenged the mixed fleet of catamarans and dinghies.

The overall winner only became clear after Derek Cheek, as commodore and race officer for the day, had calculated the handicap times.

Rob Mitchell sailed his Dart 16 single-handed for over an hour and enjoyed a well-deserved victory, just 40 seconds ahead of the next boat on corrected times.

Offshore westerly winds remained fluky in direction and gusted from force one to four.

An unconventional start line required the fleet to bare away and sail on a broad reach out to sea, heading to the leeward mark as the first leg.

The colourful pack of Dart 16s got clean away, led off the line by Mitchell, followed by Mark and George Venables and Brian Allen, who was also sailing single-handed.

James Rolfe raced his Laser One and was joined by Jamie and Owen Lowe, each sailing a Topaz.

Larry Foxon and Mike Rolfe chased hard in their Hurricane 5.9 cat and Pete Boxer and Eilish Dempsey were over early and suffered the penalty of having to restart.

Jack Dempsey and George Venables were late off the line in their Dart 16, after rigging problems delayed their launch.

Rounding the first mark to port, the boats headed off towards Frinton on the first reaching leg.

Mitchell hung on to his lead until the third leg of the sausage, when Boxer and Dempsey overtook him to windward and Foxon and Rolfe undertook him to leeward in a sandwich manoeuvre.

While the reaching legs were exhilarating, it was the beat back to the start line against a strongly flooding tide that made it technically interesting.

The offshore wind in these conditions is visible to the sailors on the water surface and can be seen to spread out as the flurries of gusts race out to sea. Depending on how these hit the boats, they can give either give a 'lift', allowing the boat to point higher, or a 'header', as the helms are forced to bare away.

The dinghy fleet responded to these variations and enjoyed a quick tacking dual.

Even the cats tacked on the biggest shifts.

The cats would go onto to do three laps and the dinghy raced for two.

Boxer and Dempsey took line honours in the Dart 18, corrected to second place overall, and the Venables father-and-son combination on their Dart 16 captured third place.

Special mention this week goes to Rolfe, who continues to resist the lure of two hulls and proved that his Laser One is a force to be reckoned with, finishing fourth.