Frensham Frenzy 2019 at Frensham Pond Sailing Club
by Clive Eplett 9 Apr 2019 07:28 BST
31 March 2019
Tom Ahlheid & Tom Stratton-Brown win the Frensham Frenzy 2019 © Clive Eplett
Football pundit Alan Hansen famously said on Match of the Day once, "you'll never win anything with kids".
Well, David Beckham, Ryan Giggs et al may have pioneered refuting those words, but this year's Frensham Frenzy truly put them to the sword, with seven of the top ten places going to youth sailors.
Fantastic for the sport, you may think. But before we get too excited for the future, we need to temper that with another statistic - there was not one helm in the 39 entries who was not either under 24 or over 45. Eek!
Anyway, on to the actual racing.
After several years of Frenzy being a misnomer, this year has proved very different. So much so that sailing on the original date was cancelled it was blowing so hard. I think being blown-off has happened more this winter than I can remember in my 30 years at Frensham - normally we still sail when nowhere else does. Hence 31 March was a replacement date, which lived up to the Frenzy name and gave us a good old blow, challenging but definitely sailable (yes, OK, your correspondent excluded, be quiet at the back)
OOD Bruce Hill set the perfect course for the wind direction, including 3 consecutive reaches with two gybes, which had the Lasers and strong contingent of visiting RS Aeros rubbing their hands in glee.
In the first of the two pursuit races, first starters Frensham's Tom Alheid and Tom Stratton-Brown in their Feva XL tore out of the blocks and seemed, every time I looked up, to be planing at about the same speed as your correspondent's RS100, with only the back third of their boat in the water. However, Maidenhead SC's Sammy Isaacs-Johnson in the only Aero5 found he had an unfettered racetrack and overhauled the two Toms, as did Frensham's Megan Ferguson in a Radial and Bowmoor's Chris Hatton in the leading Aero7. Following the Feva were locals, (non-youth, phew) Ian Cherrill in his Radial and Charlotte Videlo, another Radial sailing youth.
In race two, the wind came up a bit more, making the busy pond even more challenging to negotiate. This time Luke Anstey, in a Laser 4.7 was the only one who could catch the Toms, sailing so fast on the final reach that the moving finish-line rib and dory could not keep up with him to close the race at the precise end-time. Peter Barton in his Aero7 this time found his way through the traffic better to take third, from Chris, then Ben Rolfe (another Aero7) and Sammy.
All this gave Tom and Tom the win by a point from Sammy then, on count-back, Chris with Luke in fourth. That's two under 15 and two 16-24 crews in the first four. Peter in fifth overall was also the first non-youth (Grand Master). Charlotte's 11th in race two was enough for the first lady prize, two ahead of cousin Megan.
Thanks go, even more than usual, to RO Bruce Hill, who was expecting to be running a completely different event until the Frenzy was rescheduled and he found himself in the hot seat. He and his team did a great job.
Next year's Frenzy will again be scheduled for the Sunday after the Dinghy Show. Fingers crossed the weather provides what we had this year at the second time of asking. Meantime, we non-youth sailors need to get practising and get our acts together next year.