18ft Skiff Open at Stone Sailing Club

18ft Skiff Open at Stone © Lucie Walker

18ft Skiff Open at Stone © Lucie Walker

Perfect last minute race training prior to the Garda Worlds

Five teams were met with a good forecast for a last minute event hosted by Stone Sailing Club. The conditions provided teams with perfect conditions for boat preparation and training before all teams headed off for the Mark Foy Trophy at Lake Garda starting on Friday.

Two new boats from Australia provided much interest in how boat speed would match up to the regular boats. Steve McLean's LED team recently purchased the very well finished 'Appliances Online' hull but would the spectacular paintwork match the looks? Graham Bridle and his Sail 4 Cancer team also recently purchased the 'Fisher & Paykel' boat to improve on his starter boat that also attended this weekend with his new team.

Saturday's conditions made for tricky decisions on rig calls, with the fleet split on different rigs. The new boats showed their pace with the Sail 4 Cancer's brand new small rig keeping up with an overpowered Pica in most races, only to find some boat handling let Pica run away with 3 bullets. The new team showed good promise, managing the bigger rig in challenging conditions.

Sunday showed a much lighter forecast and all boats launched on the one rig in glamorous sunshine. Three races were held in a mixture of breeze strengths causing a lot of position changes. Pica dominated by getting their nose in front and being able to sail their own race. The Rutland Chandlery Team managed to post some good results, fending off LED and the huge single spreader rig of Sail 4 Cancer. The race committee did a good job of getting three fair races in on a constantly shifting breeze.

The boats were packed up after the weekend to make the long trip to Garda to face strong competition from teams travelling from all over the world.

Overall Results: