One Metre Nationals at Two Islands Radio Yacht Club

76 skippers for the One Metre nationals at Milton Keynes © Graham Allen

76 skippers for the 2012 One Metre nationals at Milton Keynes © Graham Allen

76 skippers for the One Metre nationals at Milton Keynes © Graham Allen

This three day event attracted 73 skippers from all over Great Britain and Europe due to the popularity of the MYA events.

Saturday sunshine greeted the skippers on the first day of the event at Furzton Lake, Milton Keynes with the wind in an ESE direction. The windward and spreader mark and downwind gate course was set with a long good beat from the start twice around giving plenty of scope to use either side of the lake. The wind was a steady 9-10 knots fluctuating easterly during the day.

With the wind coming easterly along the lake and heading further south during Sunday and rain falling in big drops making visibility not ideal. The course was challenging as the marks had to be a fair way out. However the sailing started and flowed easily during the day. The European skippers seemed to have a good day with gental giant Huub Gilissen and Soren Andresen from the Netherlands sailing against the Top GB skippers in A fleet. Darin Ballington started his move up A fleet making very few errors to end in a good place (4th) for the start of thefinal day.

The final day started badly. The wind had completely gone north-NW meaning total re-think on the course. The wind did its best to confuse all day. All skippers did their best to claw as many points as they could before the end. The Fraktal sailed by Graham Bantock performed very well in the lighter winds over the stars of the show, the BritPops sailed by Peter Stollery, Brad Gibson and Darin Ballington. The final race of the day saw the 3 top BP’s finish 1-2-3 as the wind increased. What an end to 3 days of competition.

Overall Results: (top ten)

Full results can be found on the event website.