Carveth wins SB20 Lewmar Hamble One Design Championship

Geoff Carveth wins the Lewmar Hamble One Design Championships © Katie Ashworth / SB20 Clas

Congratulations to Geoff Carveth and his team in GBR3010, Sbeed, taking a convincing win over the 10 race series for the SB20 Autumn Championship.

The 13 boats taking part in this second weekend of the 4 day series were met with some fairly extreme conditions on Saturday. The race committee made a good call to postpone for an hour on shore, with the SMS comms working well to keep competitors informed. Those that braved it out of the river made rapid progress in the icy cold temperatures with an 18 knot sleigh ride to the start area, only to find that racing had been abandoned for the day. This turned out to be a prudent decision, with J109 rig damage and SB20 spinnaker blow outs proving that the best place to spend the day was on shore.

Everyone headed to the King & Queen for the class party on Saturday evening to celebrate another great year of racing in SB20s. With live music and jugs of Dark & Stormy flowing, the class had a great evening, with lots of familiar faces joining the party. Jerry Hill was presented with the big prizes for the year (and the trophies are big!), as winner of both the Solent Series and Cowes Week overall. Loads of raffle prizes were given out, generously supplied by Zhik and the top prize of a brand new jib from Sportsboat World was scooped by Sparky – all he needed was every other part to complete a new boat to join the fleet next year, but while contemplating this, Geoff dived in and bagged himself a good deal to walk out with a shiny new sail for next season!

The breeze on Sunday had veered to the West with much calmer and more importantly warmer conditions. Sbeed won the first two races by some margin and then were gifted the final race by Henri Lloyd / Forelle Estates who, leading round the last windward mark managed to misjudge the strength of the turned tide and carried on too far, letting Speed pass on the inside track. This secured second overall for Joe Llewellyn, Nigel Wakefield and Jerry Vigus in Henri Lloyd Forelle Estates, on 19 points. 4 points separated the next 3 places overall, with Tim Newton's Polar Bear taking 3rd on 43 points, Jim Enyon's Chaotic in 4th on 44 points and Charles Sheppard in Sharc 5th overall on 47 points. Newcomers Chris Tieron and Bruno Van Dyke put in a strong performance in the Royal Southern Academy Boat and would have been challenging a top 5 spot had they made the first weekend.

As most of the regular teams to the Autumn Champs weren't around due to their boats being packed in containers on their way to the Worlds in Hamilton Island, the class have been excited to see new faces joining the fleet with 16 teams taking part across the 2 weekends. The UK Committee are working hard to pull together a great calendar for 2013 and with a strong response from the recent class survey there are now a core of members committed to securing big fleets in great venues throughout next season and are keen to welcome any other new potential teams to the class. If you are interested in getting involved, feel free to contact Katie Ashworth, UK Class Secretary or if you are interested in a boat, SportsBoat World will be able to offer you a selection of new UK built SB20's or used boats.

To follow the action from the 2012 UON SB20 World Championships "Like" the SB20 Facebook page www.facebook.com/SB20class