Hooper praises helpers after Worlds success

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Principal Race Officer for the 2012 IOD World Championship Jay Hooper has praised all the volunteers who helped make the regatta a success.

He said: “We got the job done and fortunately I was backed up by a very good team of volunteers that helped make it all happen.

“We had Gold Cup conditions that were very light and then we go into a IOD World Championship two weeks later and it’s blowing like crazy.”

High winds resulted in plenty of drama on the racecourse, ripped sails and the regatta being reduced from nine to six races.

There were collisions on the course, including one that left two-time defending champion Elliott Wislar with a broken mast after colliding with Long Island Sound stablemate Tim Heckscher in the sixth race

“It was mother nature at her finest,” Hooper added. “But Craig Davis (Boats and Technical) and his repair crew did an outstanding job keeping the boats in action when they had a lot of work to do taking rigs out.”

Hooper and his fellow colleagues on the race committee boat (Cleopatra) did their best to get a seventh race in yesterday, setting the course at 240 degrees between Pearl Island and Somerset shore. But their efforts went in vain as the winds continued to fill in from the south west, making conditions unsuitable for racing.

“We went out there and by all the reports it was a bit of gamble to go out,” Hooper said. “We had a gust of 28 knots and there were two minor incidents of damage (rigging) but nobody got hurt.”

Hooper said had racing gone ahead as planned teams would not have been allowed to use spinnakers in the heavy winds.

“There’s an unwritten rule of 20-22 knots for spinnakers,” he added. “Once we dropped anchor we decided we weren’t going to use spinnakers in those conditions.”

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