Miracle Inland Championships at Draycote Water Sailing Club

Many smiling faces at the Miracle Inland Champs © Malcolm Lewin / www.malcolmlewinphotography.zenfolio.com/sail

Draycote family teams dominate

The Miracle Inlands Championships, sponsored by NFU Mutual and OnBoard Surf and Sail, was held at Draycote Water and dominated by home boats with father and child teams. This year has seen the emergence of a significant number of leading helms from Fireballs, Solos, Lasers and RS700s using the Miracle as an introduction for young family members to race sailing. In light winds, such lightweight crews were in the element.

The two races on Saturday, saw wins first for Martin and Grace Huett who sailed away from the rest of the fleet from the start. With light winds, dropping to drifting conditions at times, the choice of which side of the beat to go was crucial and in the second race Ant and Rowan Clay were first to the windward mark but Lewis were faster on the spinnaker hoist and able to take advantage of a brief gust of breeze to build a winning lead.

Sunday’s racing started on time but continued with intermittent breeze; the Lewis’s got away in race 3, followed by the Huett’s and Peter Cuthbert. In the fourth race, another Draycote family team, Richard and Harrison Pye won ahead of Lewis’s and Huett’s.

One of the implications of the light winds was that all the leading boats, except the Lewises, had some poor results to discard. It looked as though their consistency had the championship in the bag. Martin and Grace Huett had other ideas though and their win in the fifth race meant that they won the championship on a countback to the fifth score.

Overall Results: