The last travellers event of the 2008 Supernova series was held at the home of the largest Supernova fleet in the country, Haversham SC near Milton Keynes. 33 boats turned up and they brought the wind with them. It was a good F4-F5 all day in a favourable direction straight down the lake.

Race 1 saw home club sailor and current Travellers champion Richard Pakes (666) quick out of the blocks to lead from start to finish. With Mike Gibson, current National Champion (687) and winner of the previous afternoons match racing event in 2nd, local heavy wind specialist "Bruce" Howett (651) in 3rd, and with Tony Critchley (525) down from Bolton in 4th - the day looked set to run to form. Away from the front of the fleet - it was full of incident with gear failure and the rescue boats busy as many struggled with the gusty conditions.

After a cracking lunch, PRO Vic Hardingham left the long beat, ziggy-zaggy course for Race 2. Less starters this time and some having another go after fixing halyards etc. "Bruce" and Tony had a ding-dong battle - so ding-dong it ended it the protest room after an incident at the last mark.This took a while to sort out and the decision led to a subsequent protest from Richard who had ended up demoted from 2nd to 3rd. This 2nd protest had to wait until after the final race to be heard.

As Lady Bracknell probably would not have observed - to have one protest at a Supernova Open meeting would be surprising, to have two would be extraordinary. Certainly that's two more protests than the whole of the series so far!

For the Race 3, the attrition continued with only half-the fleet electing to sail. By now the wind had steadied to a reasonable mid-F4 which meant that most that went out stayed upright and had the best racing of the day. "Bruce" - never one to shy away from incident - had some robust pre-start manoeuvres with Mike Gibson, which left Mike on the side of his boat and one of the last to cross the line. "Bruce" took the race by the horns and was the clear winner. Guest Supernova sailor Ian Morgan in a borrowed boat (611) finally got through a race without gear failure and finished 2nd from a chasing Mike Gibson who had worked his way through the fleet to finish 3rd with Tony Critchley 4th.

Special mention should go to Pakes junior, Jonathan Pakes - current Lightning 368 National champion - in conditions that favoured lard and in a fleet where over half qualified as Masters - hiked like a badger and finished an excellent 7th.

The protest got resolved as best as circumstances could allow and "Bruce" Howett won by the narrowest of margins from Richard Pakes.

Full Results here.
Gallery 1 . Gallery 2