West Solent Boat Builders Series - Regatta Week, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday
Published 20:05 on 6 Aug 2026
The West Solent Boat Builders Series for the David Jupp Trophy provides 3 days of racing with 2 races per day. Three days of very different conditions. Monday with light wind racing as the sea breeze battled with the prevailing wind direction to give some big and result changing wind conditions. On Tuesday we had 15 to 23 knot winds providing some very exciting and challenging racing conditions; but unfortunately, Wednesday racing was cancelled due to strong winds coinciding with a building afternoon sea breeze. Four races were therefore sailed, and with one discard the three best results counted towards the series results.
Fast fleet races were highly competitive with only seconds between leading 3 boats on corrected times of the 25 boats competing. Ashton Dray in an full rig laser won the series with 2 firsts, a 2nd and 3rd. 1 point behind was Ian Sanderson and Pippa/Lizzie Mellor in the superfast Icon, followed closely by Antony Oliver's full rig laser. Were it not for a false start in race, Antony could have won the series! Top 2000 was Tim Reed and Claire Lee who were 4th overall and top Twickenham sailor was Ed Skinner in a laser radial.
In the Scow Fleet, fourteen boats competed. After day 1 there was a tie in first place between Simon Howell and Andy Ash-Vie and Diana Morley. Day 2 saw conditions that favoured the double handed scows and Andy Ash-Vie and his crew Helen Farqueson remained top on their own whilst Nick and Amanda Langford managed to move up to second place with Simon third, just ahead of Neil Peacock and Alison Boxall. The minor places were all decided after rounding the final mark of the last race, very exciting racing indeed.
With winds ranging from from fluky flat calms to 23knots , the conditions allowed for great racing excellently managed by RO Rob Martin and his team.
Thank you to all volunteers for their time and efforts on the water covering this series.
Photographs courtesy of Nick Boxall.
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Tuesday: 
