THE YACHTING World Dayboat open meeting attracted 19 entries to a breezy weekend at Poole Yacht Club.

Winds on Saturday were moderate but increased to a gusty force 5-6 on Sunday to provide some exciting sailing with plenty of gear failure and mishaps.

The eventual winners, Peter and Sally Hewitt from the home club, dominated the first race but slipped up in the second allowing Colin Rainback and Zo Laing to take the lead.

Approaching the finish however Rainback suffered a broken toe strap and the ex-national champion did a back flip for an untimely swim. He had hold of the mainsheet though and such was the determination of the Poole pair, they managed to get back on course and finish second.

Although providing good entertainment for officials on the committee boat, this gear failure cost Rainback and Laing dear. They would have had equal points with the Hewitts but under tie-break rules would have been overall winners of the event.

In strengthening winds on Sunday racing was hard fought and surprisingly close. The leading two both had a first and third but were pushed hard by James Hewitt sailing with Mathew Starker, who had two seconds, whilst visitor Brendan Pell had two fourths.

The traditional wooden clinker boat trophy was taken home by John Rowntree in Bizz'm, built in 1967 and still going strong. Interest in the Yachting World Day Boat remains high and a newly constructed boat will be exhibited at the Southampton Boat Show in September.

Overall result: 1 Mandarin (Peter & Sally Hewitt) 2 Kaos (Colin Rainback & Zo Laing) 3 Sophie (James Hewitt & Matthew Straker)

Parkstone YC member Andrew Newman left sailing his F18 catamaran to join the netergy.com challenge boat Mollymawk, a formula 40 trimaran as co skipper in the double handed Round Britain and Ireland yacht race.

The race organized by the Royal Western YC is held every four years was started on June 9 in Plymouth by HRH Prince Philip and is a clockwise 2,000 nautical mile race around the British Isles.

As part of the race there includes four compulsory stops of 48 hours along the way.

These are at Cork, Barra, Lerwick and Lowestoft giving the crew the necessary time to recover, carry out repairs to their boats and enjoy the legendary social events put on by the hosting yacht clubs.

Despite losing 2ft off the bow during one leg, ripping several sails and some rigging problems which could have forced them to retire Andrew and fellow skipper Ross Hobson managed to battle through some of the most extreme weather conditions in the history of the competition including storm force 10-11 winds and 5 metre seas to complete the course in 17 days 10hrs 48m to take line honours and win their class.

Last weekend saw the introduction of dinghy racing to the annual Youth Afloat Festival of watersports.

Parkstone and Poole Yacht Clubs provided the helms whilst crews were made up from participants of the festival. After a nail biting 7 all in the series the Parkstone youngsters won the decider and the Ocean Blue Trophy.