National 12 Sprint Championship at Burghfield Sailing Club
by Chris Day 20 Mar 2018 07:22 GMT
17 March 2018
The National 12 sailing season kicked off on Saturday with a number of crews braving the "Mini Beast from the East" to travel to Burghfield Sailing Club.
Once they had arrived, there was more enthusiasm for the chance to chat with mates in the warm and welcoming clubhouse than to head out into the driving snow and some pretty tasty gusts. Fortunately, hardy locals Graham Camm and Tom Lee had equally hardy crews and launched for some short course sprint racing despite the bitter wind chill. By the time Tom had retired to the shore and the Camms had popped in to warm up and fix their outhaul, a few other sailors had thought about going out, then thought better of it, leaving only Christian Day and Charlotte Stewart to challenge Graham and Zoe.
The next 2 races went to form with the Camms pulling away after some close racing up the beats. All the sailors were glad to hear the officer of the day call lunch and then were equally happy to follow the lead of the OK class pack up their boats after lunch. We were only thinking of the poor rescue crews, honestly!
Despite the limited racing, everyone enjoyed the chance to meet up and sample some of Zoe Ballantyne's charity baking. As we weren't able to complete the Sprint Championship properly, Burghfield have kindly rescheduled the event for 20th October and this event will count towards the Gul Series rather than Saturday's racing. We look forward to a warmer re-run later in the year.