505 Open at Carsington Sailing Club

Saturday saw 11 boats turn up for the 505 open meeting at Carsington Reservoir. However, none of the guys seemed particularly keen to rig their boats due to a serious lack of wind. We made the decision that if by 15:00 hours the breeze hadn’t filled in evenly over the race course, and then the race officer would abandon. This meant hanging around all day! 3 o’clock came and the N flag was raised, meaning no more racing today. However, the wind filled in half an hour after this! So Andy Smith and Tim Needham went to show off their new twin spinnaker poles!

On the Sunday the wind forecast showed about 5 knots. This didn’t show but the first race got underway and as usual Andy Smith and Tim got off to a good start, tacking out right on the shifts with the Briddon team and Tim Rush /Andy Short close behind. Down the first run, it was whoever could get into the most breeze. Up the second windward leg Tim Rush and Andy sailed onto the left hand side, picking up a big Left hand shift which won them the race closely followed by Smithy and the Briddons.

Race two got under way and the start line was massively port end bias. The Briddon team tacked onto Port and sailed into the lead with Bobbie Johnson and Tony Merry in 2nd. The wind shifted even more to the left hand side which meant it was a reach to the windward mark and back down to the leeward mark. Team Briddon won the race closely followed by Andy Smith and Tim Needham with Bobbie and Tony finishing a very respectable 3rd place.

A big Thanks goes to the Scottish boys for making the journey south and it's great to see some of the 'Not so Hot Shots’ creeping up towards the front of the fleet. Hope to see you all at Stone SC in a few weeks time!

Tony Merry adds:

By far the best sail of the weekend was between 4 and 5pm on the Saturday when Jim/Danny, Andy/Tim and Bobbie/Tony enjoyed some excellent 3 sail reaching. There would have been a fourth boat (Alistair/Alan from Loch Lomond) but unfortunately the water was closed just as they were about to launch!

Our best result (race 2 - 3rd) should have been even better! We managed to keep Andy/Tim out until the last leg of the race when we sailed into a hole whilst they found a nice stream of wind!

Special mention should be made of Jez and Matt in achieving two 4th place results (and they were not the lightest of crews either!).

Oh! I nearly forgot - the twin poles - it was good to see Andy and Tim working away on their new pole set up in the dinghy park. Some good discussions and demonstrations on how it all works followed by a very impressive on water trial. Their first gybe seemed to be completed in about 4 seconds - about the time it normally takes me to find the guy ready to attach it to the pole! I want one (and so does Jim Blyth)!

I asked Jason what happened to him and Stuart:

On Sunday we were expecting more wind but it was very light again, but just enough to tempt us out onto the water. As an example of the frustrations, on the second race we were going upwind and it was so fickle, that every boat overtook us from windward and leeward, with us completely stationary. I would say more torture than fun, but that’s sailing!!

Overall Results:

1st 8906 Harry Briddon/Simon Briddon (Ogston SC)
2nd 9012 Andy Smith/Tim Needham (NCSC)
3rd 8935 Tim Rush/Andrew Short (Carsington SC)
4th 901 Jez White/Matt Isherwood (Draycote SC)
5th 8834 Jim Blyth/Danny Reid (Largo Bay SC)
6th 8860 Bobbi Johnson/tony Merry (Burton SC)
7th 8432 Alistair Colvin/Alan Moss (Loch Lomond SC)
8th 8905 Stuart Turnbull/Jason Lunn (Burton SC)
9th 8780 Martin Wright/Rob Burdekin (Burton SC)
10th 8474 Chris Thorne/Mike Priddle (Portishead SC)