Topper Area Championships : Sat 10th September. Download Notice of Race and Entry forms from these links.
The 29er training that was also published as being at IBRSC on the 10th September is in fact at Datchet!
Ben Palmer finished 5th overall in spite of what must have had a nightmare second day including a DNF and an OCS. Oscar McVeigh finished 11th overall. The event was held at Blessington Lake SC, near Dublin , Eire. There are results on the Club site here and reports on the Irish Sailing Association website here.
Over the summer I write a report of the wednesday race when I'm there, and also post open events results that I happen to spot or that people send me. Over the winter there's going to be a lot less of that. I'm not going to do reports of Sunday morning races because I only tuirn up for the afternoon ones, so it would be great if folk would post me results from time to time - duty teams, class captains, others, whatever it all helps. Use the results co-ordinator mail form on the results page if you don't have my email address handy.
Flat calm as folk arrived for this one. Sufficiently flat calm that quite a few people took one look at the situation and promptly de-arrived... Your scribe, planning a sail in his Cherub, thought better of it and handed it over to Nicola and Alex Groves, a much better sailing weight in the circumstances, and, somewhat against better judgement, jumped in the front of Stuart Costigan's RS400. With no great clues about wind direction or anything like that the series prizewinners, the duty team for the night, set a small triangle reasonably near the clubhouse and far from what looked like upwind edges, and hoped for the best. All you can do in the circumstances. The two above were joined on the water by the Bean brothers and two daughters in a Club Enterprise, Peter Cotterell's Solo and four Lasers.
Well the wind came in, out of a clear sky for no apparent reason at all. And it came in at bottom end of F2, albeit somewhat shifty. And it came in turning the course into a short beat and two long shy reaches.
Needless to say this suited Stuart and Jim considerably, and, sailing at the top of their form for some reason, they hurtled round the course in under five minute a lap and lapped everyone at least once. Peter Cotterel put in a measured performance for second, and Nick Ingram was best of the Lasers for third. Fourth place was the Groves in the Cherub - an excellent performance as they'd never sailed together in a boat like that, and the reaches were considerably too shy for the big masthead spinnaker. They were actually seriously overpowered at times!
Oscar McVeigh 2nd (by 3 points) overall from 278. Ben Palmer 6th, Alex Groves 50th, Sam Eversfield (no longer of a size to do well in a Topper series with no race over 12knots) 52nd from 278. Held at Largs, Scotland.
Vallensbæk Yacht Club near Copenhagen. Andy Fielder was best placed IBRSC sailor, crewing for 19th overall. Dicken Maclean's boat won the silver fleet, equating to 26th, Hannah Tatersall and John Mather took 5th in the Silver and Sarah Martin and Nicola Groves 10th, including a race win.
These was held the first week of August at Koninklijke YC, Nieuwpoort, Belgium. Rob Cage won the Masters division and was second overall (to an "Apprentice Master") and John Reay was 2nd (4th overall) from 45 entries. I reckon that qualifies as the top performances from IB sailors in the wide world this year by quite a margin.
Another Summer bites the dust... The minor placings were very open coming up to this race, and the series order shuffled considerably when the results were calculated. There was quite a decent breeze at the start, tending to drop as the race proceeded. Grabbing the bullet was Rob Cage's Laser. His third win of the series took him up to third overall. Rob Jenner followed last week's race win with a second in his Laser, but hasn't enough other good races to fight for the glassware. Mervyn Cinnamond sailed a steady race to finish third, consolidating second overall in a steady performance with only one win, but plenty of top threes and no result worse than 7th.Peter Cotterell took 4th place, but in general had lacked the edge that saw his Solo at the top last year, managing only 8th overall. Denis Chown took 5th overall, securing 9th in the series. John Reay's 6th was not what he was looking for at all, and dropped him down the rankings to 5th overall. Of the other leaders Mike Curtis was absent, but had done enough for 4th overall, suffering from being one or two places behind Carl in too many races. Carl had his worst race of the series, down at 7th, but the pressure was right off and the result irrelevant. Peter Curtis was another whose final place slipped a fair bit with a most unwelcome 11th, leaving him 6th overall.
Carl and Julie Mayhew took another series, I think this is Carl's 4th and Julie's third. It seems to be a quirk of the RS400 that lightweight crews like them are very quick in inland conditions, far faster than on the sea where heavyweights dominate the Class, and the handicap does look very favourable for our waters - given sufficient sailing ability. However when you do the sums their performance was outstanding, and in truth no remotely feasible handicap would have denied them the series. They have the talent of almost always being on top in their class, whereas there are several regular race winners in both the Laser and Solo classes.
Simon Holden was 30th from 62, and I believe that Nigel and Dominic Silman, who finished 39th, are also IBRSC members. 63 boats there as the Scorpion Class continues its recent revival.
Tuesday training finished with the traditional race. Very light and patchy winds meant that the Enterprises etc, who had the best of the holes, dominated the race. Karen, crewed by husband Adrian, won the race.
Sarah Martin and Nicola Groves were the leading female sailors and top Island Barn crew at the 29er Nationals, placing 6th overall and with a race win and a couple of seconds in their total. You can see them smiling at you on the Y&Y; website. Of other IBRSC sailors, Andy Fielder crewed the seventh place boat, Hannah Tattersall and John Mather finished 11th, and Dicken Maclean was forward hand on the 14th place finisher.
The Spring/Summer series is now complete. Please could the various scoremasters try and get the remaining results to me as soon as possible. I think some scoremasters would appreciate volunteers to help them get the results through, so if the results for your fleet are a bit behind then please contact your scoremaster to volunteer. Its not too onerous a job - what you have to do is to fill in a form on the website and then I get a PC to do the sums. The only other task is to deal with the occasional query.
As for results, so far the 1,2,3s are:-
Solo Sunday AM: Mervyn Cinnamond, Peter Cotterell, Mike Lipscombe
Saturday series: David Lawton, Rodger Stafford, Peter Tiller
Sunday Quadrilateral Handicap: Peter Curtis, Jim Champ, Arthur Phillips
Alex Groves 5th fom 86 Toppers, Sam Eversfield 7th from 58 Radials, and from 31 in the fast handicap Sarah Martin and Nicola Groves were 2nd, Dicken McLean crewed the 3rd place boat, Andy Fielder the 4th, and Hannah Tattersall and John Mather took 5th place, all in 29ers. The 29er sailors mostly missed the last day too- presumably because they needed to make Devon on Saturday for the 29er Nationals. The event report etc is here.
Topper Area Championships : Sat 10th September. Download Notice of Race and Entry forms from these links.