CLACTON Sailing Club held the first two races in their Class Racing Series.

The light winds were not to everyone’s taste but, with four more races to go over the Bank Holiday, the high-wind experts may yet have their day.

Pete Boxer, revelling in the light airs, went on to claim two bullets, making a good start to his campaign.

Commodore Martin Chivers set a classic course with a buoy laid between the Seaward and ODM.

There was a triangle/sausage that should have given lots of reaches normally favoured by the catamarans.

However, the strongly flooding tide effectively changed most legs into a beat to windward.

The usual fleet of Hurricane 5.9s, Dart 18 and Dart 16 cats were joined by an A Class, adding a touch of the unknown.

Finishing first would not be any guarantee once the handicaps were adjusted.

Larry Foxon and Mike Rolfe, in their Hurricane 5.9, took the startline honours in race one but failed to close the door on Boxer in his single-handed A Class catamaran.

He squeezed in behind but to windward.

Anyone who knows sailing boats will recognise the A Class as nearly unbeatable upwind and so the windward overtake was only a matter of time.

Boxer, acting as a trailblazer, tacked off ambitiously early and headed out into the stronger tide and would go on to need to make two more tacks to lay the windward mark.

Foxon and Rolfe and the rest of the fleet, on the other hand, hung in on starboard tack, making ground upwind close into the beach out of the tide and very nearly caught the A class.

Brian Allen and Chris O’Sullivan, in the other Hurricane 5.9, were steadily clawing their way through the fleet to make the windward mark in third place.

They went onto overtake once the kites were up on the short downwind leg.

Only later in the tacking duel would Allen slip back and have to settle for third place.

Heading back inshore, the helms could read the transit signals between A Buoy and the beach, guiding them to set a course upwind with the expectation of crabbing back down to the buoy.

Judging the tack again out to sea became critical to avoid what was becoming a trap out at the seaward as the tide by now was fairly ripping the boats downwind.

Rob Mitchell, in his Dart 16, uncharacteristically failed to get to grips with the conditions but doggedly hung in to record fourth in both races.

Daniel Brzenzinski, in the Dart 18, will surely be hoping for stronger winds later in the series to recover from having to retire from both race one and two.

The fleet bunched dangerously close at the start of race two with the canny Mitchell claiming line honours, edging Foxon and Rolfe out of pole position.

Finishing positions would, however, be an exact duplicate of race one.