Gul RS200 Grand Prix at Eastbourne Sovereign Sailing Club

The weekend 3/4 July saw many quality sporting events taking place – Wimbledon finals, Tour de France start, World Cup quarter finals (sans England). However, an event to overshadow all these took place at Eastbourne Sovereign SC when 34 RS200s took part in the Gul Grand Prix racing all weekend in warm sunshine, had a F3-5 breeze, good surfing waves and a very warm welcome – absolute quality.

Saturday’s racing began with a slight false start when, at the end of the first beat, the race was canned due to a drifting windward mark. However, three races were then run back to back with little waiting around by the PRO. Top performer of the day was old timer Dave Giles sailing with Fiona Clarke who showed the young guns how it should be done, scoring 2,1,1. He also showed how to create black flag controversy, but that is another story…… James Boyce/Sam Tozer showed that a Saturday spent pimping the new boat in a lay-by on the A3 is better than going training to score 2,1 before being black flagged in the final race of the day, along with a few others. Main beneficiaries of this though were Steve ‘I can use a power screwdriver, honest’ Dunn/Sheena Craig who took second in the final race of the day and Hamish Calder/Severine Rees-Jones in third.

Sunday’s racing saw Boyce/Tozer in no mood to mess about and they showed that young dudes can go fast, posting a perfect score of three bullets and taking the overall win. Behind, the fleet was heavily punished in race one for undisciplined starting with over a third of them black flagged. However, that did the trick though and no-one else suffered after that. Dunn/Craig sailed excellently to score 2,5,2 for the day, which was enough to give them third overall while Giles/Clarke, after an initial black flag, went 2,4 to finish second overall.

Winners of the silver fleet were Tom Wright/Helen Wightman, while Dan Perry/Jo Hermer took the bronze.

Many thanks to ESSC for running such an excellent event, especially the Saturday social which saw nearly the whole fleet up dancing, despite their broken bodies! Also huge thanks to Gul for generously sponsoring the event and providing prizes.

Next Gul Grand Prix event for the 200s is Exe SC on 17/18 July, which is just a week before the Eurocup at Riva del Garda - more champagne sailing please!

Overall Results: