Lightning368 Northern Championships at Manor Park Sailing Club

The forecasts all looked good. A decent entry booked in, cracking wind, a bit of brightness in the sky and a table booked at the local pub for post-racing discourse.

At the briefing, fifteen helms and safety crew gathered for an ominous warning from Race Officer Dave Norris: "Funnel clouds forecast for later, along with thunder and lightning..." So, with the lure of Tornados, Lightning, Hurricanes - (this is starting to sound like an RAF retired fighter display!) we took to the water anyway - though it did, amazingly, seem that the wind had lost the postcode for Staffordshire as the first race set off under the guise of a heavy-rain driftathon.

Lee Bratley gave an absolute masterclass in 'finding clear wind' as he set off well ahead of the fleet from the very opposite end of the line to everyone and, for the first time in his Lightning sailing career, rounded the windward mark in first place ahead of the squabbling pack.

Of course, true to form, when the wind completely switched off around the second mark, Lee was left stranded on the wrong side of the course and was swallowed up by the pack that were inching along in what remained of any breeze - first became thirteenth in about twenty metres!

Keeping any momentum was key in these supremely light conditions and it was young (and light) Alexander Baxter that sneaked ahead of Dom Clayton to take race one.

With the race taking so long, lunch was taken rather than suffer more pain.

Post-lunch, the wind did start to show signs of increasing just a tad - and the anticipated tornadoes and flying cows seemed set to fail to show up as the sun started to twinkle through.

Though the wind had increased, we're still only talking 'very-light-breeze' versus 'breath-of-a-swan' from the morning and another clear-wind start was essential to make good progress - shown by Bryan Westley as he snuck under almost everyone in the resulting low-speed melee.

This one became a battle between Paul White and Caroline Key, eventually won out by Paul. With Matt Hopkins finishing third to add to his fourth in the earlier race, the whole event would come down to this final round and it looked to be a battle between the youthful Alex Baxter, wily fox Caroline and risk-taking Matt.

However, despite his first race tenth place, no-one should discount Paul either.

Race three, then and initial confusion as to where the windward mark was soon saw things settle down into a cracking battle between these usual suspects - though yet another boat breakage for Matt took him from contention very early on.

Under sunny skies and a breeze that gusted to the heady heights of around six knots, it was Caroline Key that came out on top followed by Paul and Alexander. In fact, Paul's result took him right to the top end of the leaderboard, Caroline taking the event on countback from Paul, with Alexander just one point back in third.

As ever, though, racing was close all the way down the results with no fewer than eleven boats finished tied on points with someone else - that one bad tack could drop people a full four places in some cases.

So, whilst the maelstroms and four-horsemen failed to materialise, a good day was had by all and the 2014 Lightning368 Northern Championship trophy was awarded to Caroline Key under a sunny sky and in the presence of much cake!

A terrific day's racing - and, according to the telling off that the boys got from Emma at 130am during post-racing celebrations - a terrific nights social as well!

Massive thanks to all at Manor Park for a fantastic event - especially to Dave and his team for actually getting three races off in some very challenging conditions.

The next event for the class will be at Cookham Reach for the Southern Champs on Saturday the 21st of June.