Noble Marine Lightning368 Inlands at Haversham Sailing Club

Noble Marine Lightning368 Inland Championships at Haversham © Robin Stubbs

Noble Marine Lightning368 Inland Championships at Haversham © Robin Stubbs

With the promise of the usual cordon bleu standard bacon rolls, a gentle east-by-north-easterly welcomed a bumper turnout of twenty-three craft to the 'Noble Marine Lightning 368 Inland Championships' hosted by Haversham Sailing Club, near Milton Keynes.

A good job that things were looking gentle, as several were still nursing war wounds from 'Windy Sunday' at the recent class nationals, not least Tony Hodson who had pretty much rebuilt his boat during the previous fortnight and was still at work, in London, approaching midnight the night before this event!

Super to see no fewer than eight new helms turning out as well, it's certainly been a year of new faces during the 2013 season.

Race 1 saw 253, helmed by newly-elected Class Association Chairman Simon Hopkins, sneak a cracking start at the pin end, just losing out to Paul White's 406 at the first mark. Robbie Claridge's brand-new 417 came storming up fast on the reach, with a luffing match developing, but Claridge won through and, despite falling foul of the "willow swirl" at the gybe mark, clung on to White's transom to take second at the finish. Richard Palmer in 193 put in a steady performance to fight off challenges from both Caroline Key in 413 and Chris Sanders in 414, to finish a creditable 3rd. The field was stretched right out across the lake in the tricky windshifts, with the backmarkers enjoying some entertaining duelling at the rear.

Race 2 saw some aggressive jostling at the line force a handful of boats over for individual recalls. One of these was White, who had to fight hard over 3 laps to pull back from 5th to 2nd, then sneak the win by one second at the close. Defending Inland Champion Matt Hopkins in 228 was first to the windward mark, closely followed by Palmer, but both faded to let Sanders through into 3rd at the finish.

At this point, Paul had sown up the Championship - and, as if to help celebrate,the breeze livened up to a moderate Force 4, and the final race witnessed a much tighter field in the early laps.

A last-minute wind shift saw the fleet fetching the first mark in one beat, with Sanders leading Claridge, Lee Bratley in 409, Palmer, Simon Hopkins and veteran Hugh Spencer in 160. Claridge stayed way out in front to finish over 2 minutes clear. Matt Hopkins sailed himself into 2nd place by the start of lap 4, and held that position at the close, relegating Palmer to 3rd. White got off to another poor start, but clawed his way back to a discard 4th. Local man Phil East in borrowed 332, had his best performance of the day sailing to a 7th, managing to hold off a challenge from the highest-placed Junior, Alex Baxter, in 29.

As forecast, the wind freshened considerably in the last few minutes... which helped the fleet get back to shore rather more quickly than, perhaps, they'd done all day!

Haversham SC really is a great place to go Lightning sailing and a superb day was had by all, no matter where in the fleet we finished.

Well done to Paul White as not only does he take the Inland Champs title, but also did enough to secure a second consecutive 'Grand Prix' series win with one event to spare. So, not quite as tight as last year in the end, but a massive congratulations to Paul from all of us - a very popular and worthy winner of the 2013 Lightning 368 overall series title.

Many thanks to all at Haversham for a cracking event and superb hospitality - just a perfect day from start to finish, thank you!

So, there's a gap of a few weeks now to the season finale at West Oxford where the runner-up spot is still up for grabs as well as some of those all important top ten places - as well as the season closing post-race dinner.

Overall Results:

Noble Marine Lightning368 Inland Championships at Haversham - photo © Robin Stubbs