RS Aero UK Winter Championship 2016 at the Oxford Blue

Tight starts at the RS Aero Winter Championship © Tim Olin / www.olinphoto.co.uk

Ben Paton at the RS Aero Winter Championship © Tim Olin / www.olinphoto.co.uk

RS Aero Winter Championship Trophy, fittingly a fireplace poker set! © Peter Barton

For the second year the RS Aero UK Winter Champs were hosted within The Oxford Blue event of the GJW Direct SailJuice Winter Series. An impressive 27 RS Aero entries of the Blue's 147 in total planned to brave a breezy January start for a fun day on the water. With 40 different Classes entered and 121 boats on the course these events are such a festival of sail with so much interest and speculation on who and what will master the testing conditions and the excitement on the race course to come out on top.

With a blustery start to the day most RS Aeros opted for their '7' rig with seven sailors going for the smaller '5' rig providing some great class racing within the main regatta. The RS Aero fleet included five Ladies and five Youths and sailor weights varied from under 50kg to over a 100kg!

The first two races were blustery. Gusts into the 20+kns and lulls as low as about 12kn with frequent shifts too provided an interesting challenge. Those RS Aeros varying between being overpowered and slightly underpowered upwind might have been moving there sail controls (mainly outhaul and downhaul) several times a beat as each gusts & lull came through, whilst also focusing in being on the right shift! The reaches were all about getting the boat planning early and keeping it planning as hard and as long as possible. This involved some technique, powering up the sail controls and a weaving course - steering low in the gusts and high in the lulls to produce the fastest course in maximum pressure. The final race was lighter, maybe 10-12kn providing some variety, with little planning or likelihood of being overpowered.

Ben Paton (Lymington Town), Steve Norbury (Warsash), Neville Herbert (Royal Lymington), Matt Thursfield (Chelmarsh) and Peter Barton (Lymington Town) all had appearances near the front through the day, showing a weight range of 72kg to over 100kg to be competitive in the '7' rig! Will Taylor (Plymouth Uni/Brightlingsea) powered his RS Aero 5 up the windier first beats to chomp at the front runner's tails, leading most of the larger sailed boats from various classes.

Good competitive racing was spread throughout the fleet. Notable battles were Matt Thursfield and Peter Barton swapping places no less than 7 times for the lead in race 2! Neville Herbert nailed the start to lead at mark 1 in the slightly lighter breeze of the final race - however Ben Paton was gathering momentum by then, showing he still has some of his Laser Radial World Champs winning form, to take the RS Aero lead and finish the race in 3rd overall out of the 104 starters.

Will Taylor comfortably took the win in the '5's and birthday girl, Caitie Atkin, finishing 2nd '5' rig become both first Youth and first Lady. Race 3 saw a close tussle between the Ladies with just seven seconds splitting Caitie, Lucy and Emily. Good healthy family battles were rife with Emily Davis narrowly beating daughter Alice crewing an RS Feva, however Liam Willis was not so fortunate carelessly letting dad Keith beat him by a couple of places in his K1!

From the 121 starters our lead RS Aero 7s were 11th, 14th and 17th and the first RS Aero 5 was 33rd with RS Aeros spread throughout the results. Analysis shows the interesting fact that the lead RS Aero sailors in both the '7's and '5's would have moved up the rankings had this series been scored without a discard and been all three races to count. This is likely due to the RS Aero's simplicity and reliability giving less likelihood of poor races due to handling, rigging or structural failures.The design is not at an extreme end of the spectrum and able to perform in both the breezy and lighter conditions.

Full overall results of The Oxford Blue can be found here.

The Oxford Blue was the 3rd event of the RS Aero Winter Series. With the Series just one third completed and double figures of RS Aeros entered at each of The Bloody Mary this weekend and Exe's Starcross Steamer the following weekend the Series remains wide open and all to play for!

For full details on the RS Aero UK Winter Series and to keep in touch with Everything Aero check the Class website at www.rsaerosailing.org and facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/rsaeroclass

Overall Results: