Streaker Northern Paddle Series 2014
by SCOA 5 Nov 2014 15:47 GMT
5 November 2014
Streaker Northern Paddle winner Alan Gillard © Richard Wood
The Streaker Northern Paddle travellers' series sponsored by Sail Register concluded with a prize giving following the final meeting at West Riding SC in October.
The Northern Paddle series consisted of 16 meetings through the summer, starting with the most southerly event at Tamworth SC back in March. In total 79 sailors competed in the whole series with 27 Streaker sailors travelling to more than one event.
The series was not blessed with the best of wind conditions, many meetings suffering from either very light winds or very windy conditions. The Scammonden meeting being one such meeting that initially was totally blown off, only to be re-run later in the year with very light winds.
The conditions though do not seem to dampen the enthusiasm within the Streaker fleet, which as one sailor commented 'that there was a real buzz to Streaker racing'. The final meeting at West Riding was sailed in probably the best conditions of the year for Streakers with a steady force 3-4 with stronger gust, which kept all more than happy and entertained with some excellent close racing.
The overall prizes and the Northern Paddle itself, 12 races were required to count for the series. Overall it was Alan Gillard, Sheffield Viking SC who won the Northern Paddle series for the 4th time; second was Ben Ratcliffe from Scammonden Water SC with his compatriot Ian Lees taking 3rd. In total 15 Streaker sailors qualified for the series and as usual in Streaker sailing there is never a shortage of prizes so all qualifiers received this year's Streaker exclusive back pack.
Sail Register very kindly sponsor the Northern Paddle Series by providing a new Streaker sail. To win the sail, each Streaker sailor gets an entry into a prize draw for each race they competed in during the series. The event organizer Peter Tyreman travelled to the most meetings sailing a total 27 races so had the most entries in the draw. Steve Chilton accumulated 24 races, whilst Sally Ratcliffe and Paul Jago managed 20 races each. In total there were 477 entries, the lucky ticket pulled from the hat was Streaker open regular Dave Smith from Welton SC.
In closing the Streaker Class Owners Association would like to thank all those clubs who allowed us to come and sail at their water, we would also like to thank the volunteers whether they provided refreshments, manned a rescue boat, hoisted a flag or produced a race report after the event was done and dusted, their contribution is hugely appreciated by one and all.