Henri Lloyd Salcombe Yacht Club Regatta
by John Murrell 22 Aug 2011 21:25 BST
7-12 August 2011
Sponsored by Henri Lloyd and St Austell the 2011 Salcombe Yacht Club Regatta attracted an entry of 268 boats who enjoyed a full week of hard sailing and even harder partying! Even the weather played along and ignoring the Met Office predictions and gave lots of sun and plenty of breeze!
After a relatively benign start on Sunday, Monday dawned windy with the breeze continuing to fill throughout the day until it was almost enough to wetsuits of the sailors! The sights of the afternoon fleets of Salcombe Yawls, Twelve’s and Solo’s blasting in all directions with little semblance of control was something to behold. The Yawls were particularly badly hit with a third of the boats retiring through damage, a number with broken masts and at least 3 capsized... Through all the carnage Spud Rowsell and Kevin Driver took their first bullet of the week beating SYC Commodore Malcolm Squire into second.
Tuesday was almost as equally blowy with the morning fleets possibly getting the most breeze. Having taken a win in the Fast handicap class, local RNLI coxswain Chris Winzar was overheard wondering if he had even been so fast in his Merlin Rocket! And all the Salcombe chandleries were praying for the wind to die a bit as they had run out of replacement masts for the Yawl fleets!
There were some notable performances on the water, in the Asymmetric Handicap fleet Chris Haworth and Stuart Aston in an RS400 took 5 wins out of the 6 races, Pete and Liss Bennett taking the Enterprise class with a day to spare, Matt Whitfield in his Laser 4.7 taking the Junior handicap with 4 wins and 2 seconds, Phil Kings win in the Lasers with four 1st’s a second and shame about the race he sailed without his bungs in...
In the National Twelve’s John & Katy Meadowcroft took the overall victory with 4 1st’s and a second. They discarded a DNF on Tuesday when they spent more time inspecting the finish of the bottom of the boat than actually sailing it! Equally impressive was Alister Morley in the 49 strong Solo fleet, taking 4 wins and a second to beat a very high calibre turnout.
The talking point of the 4 Salcombe Yawl fleets was the performance of Spud Rowsell and Kevin Driver. With Spud having overcome major heart surgery at the beginning of the year he impressively trounced the locals, no more popular winner was there.
The most impressive performance of the week however was Emma Phillips from Starcross in the Topper class who managed to take all 6 races, a feat that saw her receive the Henri Lloyd trophy for the most successful helm of the week.
Full results are on the Salcombe Yacht Club website.