A WOODBRIDGE sailor has spoken of his pride at the role he played in clinching a trophy-winning finish at the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race with a crew that had never raced together before.

Tim Thubron skippered Jaguar Logic in the 53-mile race around the Isle of Wight at the weekend, which attracted 16,000 sailors.

The 40-year-old was thrilled as he guided the 38ft monohull to a first-place finish in their division of 40, earning them the John Franks Trophy for the fastest IRC sailing school boat.

Impressively, they claimed 27th place overall, from 1,647 entries, finishing in a time of 6hrs 58mins.

Thubron, who has more than 20 years of experience sailing keelboats, had to control a brand new crew made up of a wide-range of sailors, from novices to veterans. And he was delighted with their performance.

“It is one of my favourite races of the year and once again it was fantastic,” said Thubron, who started sailing as a child at Waldringfield Sailing Club in Felixstowe.

“We always knew it was going to be a good race as the conditions forecast a quick one. I said to the guys that we would finish at about 2pm and I think we finished about three minutes past so that was pretty accurate.

“We had trained hard the day before the race and felt pretty confident. We got off to a cracking start and I think it’s fair to say we probably led from the start-line.

“We felt we were in the top few as we sailed around the Solent and it was a case of saying we are doing really well, encouraging the guys, and needing to keep the pressure on.

“The big breaking point for us was on the leg down to St Catherine’s Point from The Needles where we overhauled most of the leaders.

“As we were going around I regularly said to the guys this is going to boil down to 20 seconds and that is exactly what we beat the next boat by.

“After six-and-a-half hours of racing it doesn’t get any better than that.”

Thubron shared the water with, among others, Olympic-bound three-time Games gold-medallist Ben Ainslie. He was at the helm of the biggest boat in the race, the 160ft schooner Eleonora.

Thubron said: “It certainly was a fantastic sight seeing Eleonora. We actually took two minutes to watch as they prepared for their start.

“It was a brilliant spectacle and that is one of the great things about this race, the different boats you get.”