Sailing: Stead is forced to pay penalty

TWO PENALTIES in the second of two races yesterday proved costly for the British team at the Mumm 36 World Championship in Kiel, Germany.

In the first race Barlo Plastics, skippered by the Olympic Star representative Adrian Stead, had played a shifty wind to perfection to win well. They had also dealt aggressively with the man who will be their rival in next month's Admiral's Cup, the American team skipper, Chris Larson.

A penalty they forced on him gave them victory, but there was more than a whiff of revenge when the American attacked in the second race. Stead and his helmsman Tim Powell had recovered from a poor start but, in trying to squeeze in front at the top mark, were caught with no right of way on what Stead described as "three waves from hell".

Barlo Plastics, which had started that race as series leader by four points, finished ninth and went into the clubhouse lying third overnight, behind the leader Karol Jablonski and second-placed Enrico Chieffi. "We made life more difficult for ourselves today," said Stead, "but with things so tight at the top and with three races to go the championship is still there for the taking."

Before that the British team's worst place had been a fourth in the third inshore race and they had worked a hard 15 hours to pick up a third in the 80-mile coastal race on Monday.

Nerves were frayed in the 80ft maxi one design fleet when the former Whitbread skipper, Gunnar Krantz of Sweden, was dismasted in the 200-mile Fehrman Race out of Kiel. The foestay pulled out of the carbon fibre mast, which then also ripped out of its base housing and smashed forward below.

Sweden's Ludde Ingvall, the leader of the Adecco World Championship, pipped Ross Field of New Zealand to win, with the French America's Cup skipper Bertrand Pace third.