Vane 36R Fleetwood Topham Cup
by Tony Wilson 23 Apr 2018 20:06 BST
21 April 2018
What a difference to a fortnight ago with sunshine at last. Six skippers and their boats, plus a good handful of experienced helpers to guide their boats on Fleetwood's blue lagoon. So pretty is the colour of our boating waters that it sometimes attracts the odd member of public just hoping to catch a giant crab with their lines baited with some left over breakfast bacon.
First up was Eddie and Tony. While Tony is still learning the ropes and doesn't really know what he's doing, Eddie walked away with the first two legs. Apart from a twenty or thirty year break, Eddie has been at this for many years and it certainly helps.
The two Peters set off next, and it was Peter Jackson who won both his legs, while Rob and John Plant took one each. We started with the Run leg first as this was the wind direction from the clubhouse.
Heat 2 and Rob with helper Derek dropped both directions to Peter Whiteside, so at this stage there were no definite clues to a runaway leader as the rest of the guys also got one leg each.
Coming up to lunchtime by the end of heat 3, John P. was ahead of the guys with his 10 points and was the only one, not to have lost a complete up and down of the lake. The going had been good with a light but adequate wind and had more or less filled all the corners of the lake by now, but all was to change for the afternoon.
After the lunch break the tide had turned and so had the wind direction. It was swinging back and forth so you were sometimes clueless to whether you were running fixed or broken vane and also the points on direction had been reversed around between pairs of skippers sailing.
The last two heats seemed to drag on, as by now the winds were very light and it was with John P. dropping the last return leg to Eddie that put him on equal points with team Rob for a sail off. John had a few hick ups in forgetting whether he had fixed or broken his feather, and after a very lengthy drifting two beat shoot off, gave defeat to victor Rob Wheelers boat Sybora, which we believe was fomerly berthed over at Gosport.
We concluded around the 5 o'clock mark with just the one round making it quite a long full day for the six boats.
Thanks to Bob, Dave and Ian for polling off and to Eric Watkinson for race office duties on the day.
Topham Cup Results:
1 Rob Wheeler 18pts + 6pts sail off
2 John Plant 18pts
3 Eddie Greenwood 15pts