Topper open meeting at Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club
by Jim Champ 2 Mar 2014 10:58 GMT
1 March 2014
It was intimated that, unless we changed the date of our spring
Topper open, turnout would suffer because too many potential
contestants would be away skiing. So we changed it to Sailboat
weekend. What were we thinking? The forecast was rather less than
encouraging too, with little wind forecast.
Sadly that turned out to
be correct. However it was also a glorious early spring day, with
bright sunshine most of the day, and maybe even just enough UV making
its way past to make the skin glow a little. So, anyway, it was a
rather reduced turnout that found itself wearing too many layers as
the day progressed.
It was also something of a nightmare day for the race team, with
little wind and that highly variable in the morning. Frankly many
adult classes (and certainly mine) would have plain refused to
launch. The Topper fleet, however, are made of sterner stuff, and
were very keen to start. At one stage a despairing voice was heard
over the radio saying "well, shall we just set a course for the
forecast and see what turns up?"
What turned up was a painfully slow
one lap race in which 3 of the four legs of a roughly square
quadrilateral were one sided fetches on port tack for at least part
of the time, whilst the finale was a dead run with a gust compressing
the entire fleet as they approached the finish line. Nancy Scott, who
had had a comfortabl-ish sort of lead, held on to win by a good three
inches from Patrick Croghan, with William Cook third and Daniel
Thompson 4th. Fifth went to Morgan Archer, and 6th to Kiyo Wong.
At this point we elected to break for an early lunch. Good idea.
Lunch was good. In fact lunch was very good. So after a good break we
resumed, hoping for a good race, and with the RO promising: "one more
race if its no good out there, two more if a bit of wind comes in".
Well, you really couldn´t say that race two was much better than race
one, being another painfully slow 40 minute one lap job. A big shift
on the gun saw most of the top end of the fleet discovering they were
now comprehensively at the wrong end of the line and in deep trouble.
After craftily shutting out a couple of others who had designs on the
committee boat end Nancy found herself going from first to close to
last in the space of one vicious wind shift. And then the wind came
in from the other side as well. Still, in spite of this, the
erstwhile leaders salvaged their race and finished Scott, Croghan,
Thompson, Wood with Archer 5th again and Magnus Handley 6th.
The last leg of the race did see a bit more wind, and the consensus
amongst the gathered sailors was that they'd like another race, so
they were sent off again. They 'hurtled' round the first lap,
probably even achieving single digit speeds in knots, and so the RO,
with a bit of mark moving top optimise the course for what seemed
like steady-ish wind, sent them round again. Hubris, I think the
Ancient Greeks called it. The wind promptly died.
However this did
lead to some slow motion ballet round the windward mark. The top 4
from the previous races had broken free again, and as they approached
the windward mark on lap 2 Thompson was leading Scott, with Croghan
and Cook not far behind. A big header saw Thompson and Scott ejected
from the layline and unable to reach the mark. Scott tacked off
first, and took the transoms of the followers, whilst Thompson waited
a bit, but found himself pinned by Croghan and Cook, who were laying
the mark.
Unable to break free he was forced to gybe round behind
everyone, ending up fourth as they headed for the last downwind legs.
Nancy came through again on the downwind legs to win the race and the
event with a perfect score.
Her win meant Croghan couldn't be caught
for second, whilst Thompson's second place was just enough to give
him 3rd in the series ahead of Cook. The hyper consistent Archer
took another 5th to wrap up 5th place, whilst Magnus Handley took a
second 6th for 6th overall.
Archer also picked up the U13 prize, and Handley the prize for first
sailor without having (yet?) had the benefit of squad training. Nancy
Scott also took the prize for first local boat, Kiyo Wong second
local boat and Cormac O'Brian third local to round off the
prizewinners.
Overall Results:
Pos | Sail No | Club | Helm | R1 | R2 | R3 | Pts |
1st | 46623 | Island Barn Reservoir SC | Nancy Scott | ‑1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
2nd | 46893 | Queen Mary SC | Patrick Croghan | 2 | 2 | ‑4 | 4 |
3rd | 46919 | Queen Mary SC | Daniel Thompson | ‑4 | 3 | 2 | 5 |
4th | 45710 | HISC | William Cook | 3 | ‑4 | 3 | 6 |
5th | 46223 | Blue Circle | Morgan Archer | ‑5 | 5 | 5 | 10 |
6th | 45770 | Queen Mary SC | Magnus Handley | ‑7 | 6 | 6 | 12 |
7th | 45055 | Island Barn Reservoir SC | Kiyo Wong | 6 | (DNF) | 8 | 14 |
8th | 12764 | Island Barn Reservoir SC | Cormac O'Brian | 8 | 7 | (DNS) | 15 |
9th | 41724 | Island Barn Reservoir SC | Sam Jackson | ‑11 | 9 | 7 | 16 |
10th | 42831/45831 | | | (DNC) | 8 | 9 | 17 |
11th | 15881 | Island Barn Reservoir SC | Elinor O'Leary | 9 | ‑11 | 11 | 20 |
12th | 44375 | Island Barn Reservoir SC | Ellie Wall | 10 | 10 | (DNF) | 20 |
13th | 40795 | Island Barn Reservoir SC | Maisie Bristow | ‑12 | 12 | 10 | 22 |
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