GP14 Masters Championships at West Kirby Sailing Club

Forty three boats from thirteen different sailing clubs entered the GP14 Masters Championships, an event in which all the helms have to aged over 40 years. This is the second time that West Kirby has been host to the Masters Championships the first being in 1996.

This years event was sponsored by npower who have built North Hoyle Offshore Wind Farm off the North Wales Coast. Its quite ironic that on day one all racing was postpone d due to strong winds.

In the evening the competitors all sat down to a meal in the clubs "Summer Pavilion"(in reality a dressed up boat shed) with entertainment provided by the Mersey Beatles.

On Day 2 racing got underway for the 40 boats who braved the strong winds on the River Dee.The intension was to run race 1 after race 3 & 4 in order to get enough races to qualify for the championships. Racing was under the watchful eye of race officer Steve Dransfield and his team.

The wind wa s still blowing a good force 4 at the start of race 3 and with a strong tide flooding into the river it meant for trying conditions especially for those more used to inland lakes.

After some close racing it was Graham Flynn and Frank Nickles of Bartley Sailing Club who took the honours in the first race followed by Richard Instone and James Goodfellow of Chase Sailing Club.

The second race of the day saw a slight increase in wind strength which led to a number of crews retiring to the sho re. In this race it was Instone/Goodfellow who won with Flynn/Nickles taking second place.

The final race of the day was in fact race one of the championship. Three races were required in order to qualify the event for a championship and as the President of the GP Association Paul Simes reminded the competitors at the dinner the night before "There is NO dicards"

The tide had by now turned and was on the ebb making holding back from the line very difficult. Most of the fleet were over th e line still with 30 seconds to go before the start and the race committee had no choice but to call for a general recall. After the recall the dreaded black flag came out something the race officer had threatened to do at the briefing if there was a general recall.

The eventual start of race 1 saw five boats black flagged including Richard Instone and James Goodfellow bringing the dream of winning the 2004 Masters Championships to an end. In this race the wind was now blowing a good force 5 with fantastic planning conditions. Ian Platt and Chris Jolly of Bolton Sailing Club won this race after not being able to start in the first race due to rudder problems.

At the end of racing it as Graham Flynne and Frank Nickless of Bartley SC won the masters trophy. John Dixon and Mark Hinton of host club West Kirby won the Grand Masters Trophy(for helms over 50). Graham Knox won the over 60's trophy. The ton-up trophy for the boat with the helm and crew combined aged over 100 went to Tob y Taylor & Keith Bulidy

The championship was an enormous success and is a credit to West Kirby SC and all the people who volunteered to help run the event. We would like to thank npower and Bakewell for there support in sponsoring the event.

Overall Results:

Results generated and submitted using Sailwave sailing scoring software