The old adage Two’s Company, Three’s a Crowd seems to be more relevant every day in yacht racing. As boats get bigger and crews harder to find, short-handed racing is becoming ever more popular.

At least that’s the experience of The Royal Southampton Yacht Club with its McGuigan’ Wines’ Double Handed Series attracting more than 165 entrants this year. It culminates with the Autumn Double on this Saturday, October 11.

Newcomers this year Laurence and Oscar Mead on their J105 are dominating Class 1, but racing is tight for the lower places between a HOD 35, a Stewart 37 and a First 34.7. In Class 2 previous year’s winners have missed races providing an opportunity for the Laser 28s and X332 to take the top positions. The club class has seen tighter racing with boats ranging from Katie Miller’s Beneteau Figaro to a Sun Odyssey 45, with every sort of boat in between.

This Saturday’s Autumn Double race is in the Solent, and entries are open to monohulls with or without IRC certificates, and to multihulls. There are 80 entries in five classes at present and if the weather behaves, promises to be a fantastic race to end the 2008 series. Prizes will be awarded to the first three boats in each class.

There’s still time to enter and for more details and to enter on line, see www.rsyc.org.uk. Or contact the Sailing Secretary on sailing@rsyc.org.uk or 023 8022 3352.