RS Tera Open at Ripon Sailing Club
by Jennie Clark 17 May 2015 21:00 BST
16-17 May 2015
RS Teras at Ripon © Jennie Clark
Ripon Sailing Club hosted the second event in the RS Tera Northern Travellers series, with their 2 day open meeting on 16 and 17 May. Twenty four young helms made up the fleet, numbers in the Pro fleet being hit by the recent migration of a large group of the older helms to the Laser class, but it was great to see a whole new bunch of faces joining in for the first time and this bodes well for the future. The event was sponsored by Outdoor Sewing Solutions, Red Bus Coaching, Craftinsure and Mike Saul Dinghy Services.
PRO Bernard Clark, assisted by Philip David, Kevin Vials and Rob Shepherd got racing underway promptly and set the fleet off in the challenging conditions. The coach boat and safety team were kept busy with multiple capsizes and it was a somewhat reduced fleet that finished the race. The Rastrick brothers showed how it was going to be with Henry taking the gun in the Pro fleet and Jamie in the Sport fleet. They kept that pattern up till the last race so we won't make much more mention of their efforts! Rohan Murphy took 2nd in the 2 boat Pro fleet -with Josh Manning 2nd in the Sports after some close racing with Ellie Clark and George Combe. These are also names which appear regularly! Beth Miller and William Bailey deserve special mention, both sailing in their first Open Meetings and both surviving the conditions to complete the race.
Race 2 was held straight after lunch and was pretty wild with only 6 boats finishing the race in the Sport fleet. George Combe bagged 2nd place in the Sports, and went on to do the same in race 3. Ellie Clark sailed hard in race 4 to take 2nd place.
Sunday morning dawned dull and windless, which certainly wasn't what the forecast had been suggesting but right on cue the wind arrived at 10am and started to demolish the fleet again. More capsizes, more super sailing. Those Rastrick boys didn't have it all their own way though, with Rohan beating Henry in Race 6 and Ellie beating Jamie in the Sports. This was the only race where the start wasn't a clean one and sadly 2 competitors in the Sport fleet ended up scoring OCS as a result. On a positive note it shows how much the fleet are now pushing the line!
Katy Phillips, of sponsor Craftinsure, spent the weekend coaching the fleet and made the prize-giving on behalf of the club. In addition to prizes for overall finishing position a number of Craftinsure Coach awards were made.
Overall Results:
Pro fleet
1st Henry Rastrick, Ripon SC
2nd Rohan Murphy, South Windermere SC
Sport fleet
1st Jamie Rastrick, Ripon SC
2nd Ellie Clark, Ripon SC/Derwent Reservoir SC
3rd George Combe, Derwent Reservoir SC
4th Josh Manning, SCYC/Leigh and Lowton SC
5th Cameron Straughan, DRSC
6th Eilish Graham, Derwent Reservoir SC/Ripon SC