Aussie Summer Series at Castle Cove Sailing Club Overall

Helen Rollinson during the Castle Cove Aussie Series © Richard White

Pete Barnstable's Osprey during the Castle Cove Aussie Series © Richard White

The various spring series are well underway at Castle Cove, and visiting overseas Olympic teams are getting set-up – but surprisingly, most activity is in significantly windier, occasionally colder, and definitely wetter weather than the recently completed ‘Aussie Summer Series'.

This first edition of a through-winter CCSC dinghy series ran from beginning of January through to the end of March, involved 48 different boats at various times and ended up with a great 12 race series.

The Int14 of Sam Pascoe and Alex ‘nightly' Knight spent much of the series under the radar – sporting a number of bullets but not quite enough races sailed to put them ontop of the leaderboard. However, despite a rare 2nd place in the last race to visiting 14er Glen Truswell, Sam & Alex eventually wrapped up the series win with a 7 point comfort zone. Their first club series victory thanks to flying the club flag at opens usually.

Second overall was the ever present Nick Grace, who was rarely beaten by anyone other than the 14 and had a comfortable margin before the next Contender of Rob Smith in 4th (still occasionally struggling with keeping ‘carbon above plastic' issues), and further down the top 10 – visitor Tony Sawyer.

Splitting Nick & Rob on the table came the first of the Ospreys, - this one being coach Adam's (Bowers) helmed by Jock Fellows – but with Adam occasionally handing wire duties over to various unsuspecting ‘volunteer stand-ins'. Although usually battling with the Contenders – Jock & Adam were kept honest by the proximity of the other Ospreys of John Pym helmed by Marcus Scrace, and Pete Barnstable (again – with a mix of rent-a-crew). Counting only a few results (albeit very good ones) were others in the growing Osprey fleet - namely Kevin Francis & Phil Male, showing early form that they are carrying into the Spring series, and close by Celia Rushton over from WSC.

From the 13 juniors that took part, Emily White put together a consistent set of good finishes in her Laser to bag 7th spot, and was notably the first non-trapeze boat. Emma Bishop did enough with her few appearances in her Topper 4.2 to slot in at 9th while the first asymmetric on the list was the Laser4000 also sailed by club teenagers – Giles Piggott and Rowan Lees.

Elsewhere Megan Pascoe added some ‘front of Merlin' variety to her 2.4 Paralympic selection training - joining us during Feb and posting some good results crewing for various guest helms inc Niki Birrell. Olympic medallist Simon Hiscocks ‘flew' across from Portland a couple of times to score a second in one race in his Moth, and Helen (Rollinson) atleast graced us with her foiling presence a few times after all the work of organizing & managing the series.

Voted unanimously as well worth the off-season outings, with the only rider being:- when to fit in the winter boat pimping jobs?

Overall Results: