Youth stamps dominance on Ovington Rutland Midland Laser/ILCA Grand Prix

Len Sumner's able race team made full use of the 'Main Pond' race area at Rutland Water on 9th May. The large triangle sausage course was set up just south of the dam. It made for fabulous racing conditions and exciting racing that brought many walkers, cyclists and even the Rutland Belle tourist boat to a halt as they took a look at what was going on.

The races were fired off in sharp order, 11am on the nose and just a small pause after the tail boat finished, before we were back into it for the three back-to-back races. A good mix of friendly visitors and Rutland local class members made up the 27 entrants and they set out to tackle the conditions and each other - in that order.

Ovington Rutland Midland Laser/ILCA Grand Prix - photo © Chris Oates

Whilst the SSW breeze had a reasonable 2.5 mile fetch to the race course start area, that did not make it a straight-forward stable situation. Gusts topped out at 27 knots and it touched 25 knots routinely but also dropped down to 12 knots a few times. The shift arc was at a maximum 25 degrees, but the frequency was a bit irregular and most beats featured around 15 degrees of shift in some form.... staying in phase was paramount.

The long fetch unsurprisingly meant it was lumpy over the whole course and ample planing conditions for all existed on the reaches and even on the runs for those adept at the art of swerving around. There was no tide or salt! The pin crew of Ian Dooley and Debbie set a bit of port bias and the actual pin end mark looked a bit menacing as the breeze and chop had toppled it - so all the starts were clear, sometimes with a bit of pin end jostling that sorted itself out.

Ovington Rutland Midland Laser/ILCA Grand Prix - photo © Chris Oates

All rig sizes started together and race pace was actually not that different upwind for the rigs. Certainly the dominant winner Jamie Tylecote in his Radial/ILCA 6 was pushing the leading Standards/ILCA 7s all the way round - and often ahead of them. To be fair there was a gaggle of Radials next in the running order who looked to have a real battle going on that occasionally took them high on the downwind legs and this was to the benefit of the leading 4.7/ILCA 4's who then closed up. First female overall was Ellie Hattam sailing a 4.7/ILCA4.

Ten Rutland youth sailors were in the fleet, several of whom were in their first Laser open meeting. The Laser/ILCA youth scene is very strong at Rutland. To complete the overall podium below Jamie were two visiting 4.7s. In second overall was Tom Thwaites (Royal Norfolk and Suffolk), taking a race win on corrected time in race 3. Third spot overall went to Josh Oates (Bartley) on a three way tie break from the 4.7's of Will Fearn (Rutland) and Archie Burton (Pennine).

Ovington Rutland Midland Laser/ILCA Grand Prix - photo © Chris Oates

The Radial/ILCA6 fleet second place went to Ewan McAnally (Rutland) and third to Ben Tylecote (Rutland). In the Standard/ILCA7 fleet the first visitor was Jamie Blake (Great Moor) whilst the Rutland sailors made up the standard podium with Steve Tylecote, Jim Lowbridge and Mark Williams.

This is the first Open that Rutland have held since March 2020 and it was enabled to run because the class has such a good level of support at the club.

Simon Stonehouse dished out Ovington prizes to the lucky few on the sunny club lawn. Simon gave a prize to the first adult, highlighting the fact that eight out of the top ten were youths and seven out of the top seven were youths! Everybody went on their socially distanced way by 3pm.

Overall Results: