Sailing: Winston still not quite in the clear
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Your support makes all the difference.DENNIS CONNER'S Winston has remained second overall in the 60-foot class of the Whitbread Round The World Race after an international panel of referees stuck by their guns yesterday and upheld their award of 21 hours and 28 minutes compensation for going to the aid of the damaged Italian yacht, Brooksfield.
They heard four protests from yachts saying the award was too much, thought about it overnight, met for two more hours and then delivered their verdict.
The nub of the complaints is that, however fairly in mathematical terms the jury has calculated the time spent by Winston diverting course, the consequence of making her time just 67 seconds slower for the second leg than the record- breaking run set by Lawrie Smith in Intrum Justitia distorts the overall picture.
It pushed Intrum from second to third overall and assumed that Winston would also have beaten Ross Field's Yamaha and Javier de la Gandara's Galicia.
While it only cuts into Chris Dickson's overall lead at the end of two legs, he has now joined in the protest after originally saying that he was content with the decision. 'The jury has done what may be fair for Winston but it is not fair for everyone else,' he said. 'Winston has been given a five or six-hour jump, some might say at the expense of others.'
Brad Butterworth, the skipper of Winston, predictably said that he thought the jury had been fair. But Field, his fellow-Kiwi, is still angry and said: 'I have no objection into the way the jury conducted this affair but the book is not closed. To let the matter rest would be foolhardy on my part. I will be talking further to my rules consultant.'
Field explained that he, too, thought that Winston had been given about six hours too much and that six hours represented the performance improvement for the whole 32,000-mile course expected from building a new boat incorporating all the experience and testing of his original boat.
Britain's Dolphin & Youth finished 14th and last of the fleet at the end of the second leg of the Whitbread in Fremantle yesterday after having seen their rudder break off in the Southern Ocean and then being forced into the Kerguelen Islands for repairs.
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