Contender Open at Weston Sailing Club

Seventeen boats from all corners of the UK travelled to the spiritual UK home of Contender sailing to be greeted with slightly better winds than predicted. The meeting was shared with the RS700 and Byte fleets adding both to the on the water and off water action.

As bacon butties were consumed, most participants were hoping they could take advantage of Stuart Jones absence with his almost 100% open meeting winning record for 2013.

Race 1 set the trend with Mike Murley always in the leading bunch with the remaining competitors doing their best to be inconsistent, after much rowing (the pumping flag was up), Mike took the win with David Davies in second and Keith Paul in third.

Race 2 started in much the same conditions as race 1, with no real pattern to which side was favoured. Various people had a go at leading the race, until Gary Langdown took control for a while, this ended with a falling out of the boat incident, so Martin Frary eventually won the race with Gary in 2nd and Mike Murley charging through into 3rd place.

The wind had built slightly in for race 3, with Simon Mussel leading at the windward mark, followed by Rob Smith and Martin Frary, was it Mike Murleys turn to be inconsistent. Mike eventually took the lead again from Martin Frary, with the places looking reasonably set, until the last run when a large doldrums like hole engulfed the leaders; Mike showed his class to hold onto the win with Simon Mussell claiming 2nd and Rodger White showing his usual light winds form to take third. Most unlucky loser being Jeremy Blaydes who managed to drop from 3rd to 10th.

Sunday competitors arrived to a flat calm, eventually racing was abandoned with Mike Murley winning by a large margin, always having the pace to get out of trouble while the rest of the fleet managed to be consistently inconsistent!

Many thanks go to the excellent race officer who provided an excellent turnaround of races and fair courses. The addition of the downwind leeward gate definitely added an interesting dimension to the racing, is this something for future Contender courses?

Overall Results: