BBQ Series Race 1
Sunday afternoon saw the first in a new series designed to encourage the younger members of the club (and/or for those new to sailing) into some informal and fun racing and to make use of those hopefully glorious summer Sunday afternoons. Anyway the theme for Race 1 was the IOW Round the Island (no prizes for guessing the course !) and 12 boats took part, 4 in the adult handicap class, 7 youth toppers and 1 intrepid oppie ! The afternoon saw some lovely sunshine and some useful (but not too useful) winds even for getting around the lee side of the island. The course was 3 laps or whenever the OOD got bored !
Monica in her Europe lead the fleet off at the start and showed the way around the island, particularly where the wind was on the lee-side. Took a while for the following fleet to twig this ! Anyway Monica was followed by gaggle of Toppers, including Joe, Edward, Sam Alex and Luke, William, Rhys, Jemima in her oppie, and two lasers.
Monica of course made it look too easy, finished the first lap in just over 5 mins and completed the other two in an overall time of 20m:25s to romp home in 1st place which ever way you looked at it. There was some hard competition going in the Topper fleet behind them with positions changing a number of times. The competition was possibly a little too intense at times – Rhys I am pretty sure racing rules do not allow the use of water pistols on opposing boats ! Jemima did well to keep in contact with the rest of the fleet and to put up with the contrary winds behind the island.
Anyway, after Monica, Joe came home as the first topper, with Edward just behind him. Edward would have made 2nd if passed on the right side of the finish mark on the first attempt ! Sam was the 3rd youth topper, with William as the 4th. The full results by class are shown below. After the racing came the BBQ bit with a couple of the families taking advantage of the weather to light up the BBQ and enjoy the summer evening.
The next race in the series – the “Fastnet” – is on Sunday 21st June 14:30 (ish) start. So come on all you budding topper racers why not come along and see if you can knock Joe off his pole position. We also need more oppies to give Jemima a run for her money.
| Handicap | Youth | |||||||||
| Boat | Helm | Sail No. | Position | Pts | Boat | Helm | Sail No. | Position | Pts | |
| Europe | Monica | 374 | 1 | 1 | Topper | Joe | 31573 | 1 | 1 | |
| Topper | Tony | 24326 | 2 | 2 | Topper | Edward | 17712 | 2 | 2 | |
| Laser | James | 148201 | 3 | 3 | Topper | Sam | 20439 | 3 | 3 | |
| Laser | ? | 140946 | DNF | 4 | Topper | William | 44904 | 4 | 4 | |
| Topper | Alex | 29871 | 5 | 5 | ||||||
| Optimist | Topper | Rhys | na | 6 | 6 | |||||
| Boat | Helm | Sail No. | Position | Pts | Topper | Luke | na | 7 | 7 | |
| Optimist | Jemima | na | 1 | 1 |
James Primrose