Phantom Open at Shustoke Sailing Club
by Brian Webley 30 Sep 2017 17:41 BST
24 September 2017
Shustoke Phantom Open © Zara Turtle
Sunday 24th September saw the Phantoms return to Shustoke for the 7th year with a turnout expectedly smaller than last year, which counted as part of the national Grand Prix circuit.
The four boats of Jim Hopton, Brian Webley, and Ryan Padro from Shustoke, and Richard Simms from Carsington joined the Lasers in the joint Open event.
The OOD set a course with three beats zig-zagging along the reservoir with a reach back to the start. The weed cutting team having made sure that the lake was completely clear of weeds, enabling trouble free sailing on all of the lake.
The first race started with little anticipation of decent winds as there'd been large patches of calm whilst the sailors were eating their bacon butties as part of the pre-start warmup. The wind did pick up to the predicted force three with sustained gusts later on powering up to planing conditions. The start saw a traffic jam of 4 boats at the pin end of a long line with Ryan in a borrowed boat returning for a guest appearance back to dinghy sailing getting the best of the start, with Jim Hopton's 'Wooden Top' getting completely boxed in and trailing the group. This wasn't to last long as Jim soon took the lead, and whilst Ryan and Richard were having a great battle between them, Brian's 'Barcode' managed to close the gap.
The flying start from Ryan soon came to an end as the toe strap came loose allowing Richard to overtake Ryan; who had to retire and dry off following the induced swim. The race positions remained until the end, although Brian did take a detour to the finish line, and needed to backtrack to the correct course before finishing.
The next two races were held back to back after a nice lunch provided by the fantastic galley staff. With the flukey wind direction more or less holding straight the OOD set the same course, and both races saw the same result of Jim first, Richard second, Ryan third, and Brian fourth (making the results very easy to work out!).