420 Coached Open Meeting at Itchenor Sailing Club
by Mike Jeffries 20 Dec 2015 22:03 GMT
420 Open Meeting and Coaching at Itchenor © Steve Mitchell
This weekend saw Itchenor Sailing Club host twenty-six 420 sailors at Itchenor for the 420 coached winter Open meeting. Alastair Shaw was PRO and ran eleven races over two days for competitors that had travelled from as far as Cornwall, South Wales and Suffolk.
Conditions were highly variable with gusts that were hitting 23knts at points. Racing started off opposite the Club on Saturday morning running through to the Bosham Channel and up to Rookwood on Sunday lunchtime.
The fleet consisted of a broad range of sailors from those new to the fleet as well as four RYA Youth Squad boats. The fleet was coached by Steve Irish, the RYA 470 Podium Potential Squad coach and Tom Mapplebeck of Curra Dinghies.
Competitors and their families took full advantage of the club's facilities and filled the club house with many arriving on the Friday night, enjoying a curry and Christmas jumpers evening on Saturday night and staying over until Sunday afternoon. Itchenor was represented by Joanna Kalderon and Paddy Jeffries.
The event was won decisively by James Clemetson and Will Birch-Tomlinson, with a string of bullets, and first girl boat was Ella Bennet and Emily Gent.
See full open meeting results
The next event of the series, will be held at Draycote Sailing Club on 27/28th February, in preparation for the Inland Championships three weeks later.
This was the last of the six event traveller or coached racing series, four to count, which have run through 2015. Events have been held in Lymington, Itchenor and Datchet and blown off at Cardiff. Sailors can change pairings for the series and results are then calculated for the helm and crew individually.
Top four traveller series results:
1st: Jo Kalderon
2rd: Alex Smallwood and James Scott
3rd: Ross Thompson
4th: Ella Bennet and Emily Gent (first all girl boat)