CONDITIONS suited the experienced team of Mike and Sue Suffield in Clacton Sailing Club's Haslett Mug race.

With the combination of a light onshore wind forecast, cold temperatures and a strongly ebbing tide, the race was very nearly postponed.

However, as optimistic competitors rigged and prepared their boats for a ‘ghoster’, some tantalising puffs of winds started to play across the sea surface.

Martin Chivers therefore set a modest course with the option to shorten.

With the tide under the boats on the start line, there was a real risk of going over early and the start signal was indeed immediately followed by a second blast, indicating one or more boats had made false starts.

Both Mike and Sue Suffield, in their RS200 dinghy, and Daniel Brzezinski, in his Dart 18, turned back and re-crossed the line, leaving Brian Allen to sail clear in his Dart 16 catamaran.

In the still relatively light winds, judgement was critical to know when to tack or gybe to either use or counter the effect of the tide around the triangular course.

Husband-and-wife team Mike and Sue have been sailing together for 20 years, much of the time in the tidal estuary of Salcombe.

As such, they are experts in these conditions.

Tacking their RS dinghy to take advantage of the wind shifts surely gave them an advantage upwind over the less agile catamarans.

Once around the windward mark, the fleet headed off on a broad reach to a seaward buoy and then back downwind to the ODM.

Brian Allen was first to hoist his spinnaker and challenged Pete Boxer and Eilish Dempsey, who were by this time leading in their Dart 18.

Mike and Sue, with their kite up, could sail lower and surf longer on the rolling swell in their flat-bottomed dinghy.

Once round the ODM, it became obvious they could also point higher than the cats in these conditions as they began the sausage back to the seaward mark.

Upwind and downwind legs split the fleet of dinghies and cats and it was hard to predict the effect of the handicap adjustment on the final positions.

The original course was shortened to two laps and, after an hour and a half of racing, just five seconds split the first two places.

Mike and Sue Suffield were the well-deserved winners, having come second in the same race last season.

The couple only started sailing together at the age of 50, proving age need not be a barrier to competitive sailing fun.