707 Northern Championship at Scarborough Yacht Club
by Gregor Southall 9 Aug 09:53 BST
3-4 August 2019
707 Northerns at Scarborough © Chris Clark
Crews waking up to an early start on Saturday were sorry to note the complete lack of wind. The sea looked like oily glass with not a breath of movement.
Due to tidal constraints once we left the harbour we were out through the tide so as the RO and mark layer tried their best to find wind the 707s had to drift up and down with some crews managing to catch up on sleep and other crews doing their best to feed the fishes!
Thankfully after about an hour a light breeze appeared and we managed to get race 1 in before the wind dropped again. Turbulence were looking slick and finished in first place closely followed by Sharky and Tallulah. Unfortunately due to the wind falling back away to zero again the decision was made to abandon the day's races and retreat back to the Yacht Club for a hair of the dog.
As always with the 707Fleet sailing is the key, but not the only reason we are enthusiastic about our Class, and there were a few sore heads following a late night around Scarborough's finest night pubs and clubs. Turbulence and Sharky crews looked the worst effected.
Scarborough Yacht Club did us proud with their hospitality including a fun Saturday night with BBQ and party games went down well and after a close game of beer pong Partial Pleasure emerged as the clear game winners, although they should have been disqualified as 'professionals' as we understand this is all students do nowadays.
Sunday looked far more promising wind-wise and we were straight under way into race 2. After a massive shift in the first race the wind finally settled into a fresh SE direction but with an underlying big swell, and some fast close racing ensued.
The lead changed several times as boats battled with the spring tide and many penalties were taken as the top mark was misjudged. It's not often you are affected by such a strong tide in apparently open water, but it was a challenging beat.
Conditions became even more perfect with sunshine and 10-18 knots of wind powering up the 707s on the beat and offering some surfing downwind as the swell continued.
It was great to see Scarborough's local fleet back in good form and keen to take on the visiting boats, and we hope the enthusiasm generated might develop into even more boats sailing regularly at SYC.
Turbulence emerged as the clear winners with 4 aces, a 2nd and a 4th, but it was always tight an any of the leading boats could have nipped it at the last minute. Ex-Class-owned boat Partial Pleasure came second only a point ahead of Hartlepool boat Sharky helmed by Andy Hughes. Even the 4th and 5th places were separated only on countback, such is the closeness of this fleet's racing.
Congratulations to Chris Spark and the Team on Turbulence - the 2019 707 Northern Champions.
Overall Results:
1st Turbulence
2nd Partial Pleasure
3rd Sharky
4th Rammie
5th Tallulah
6th A Grand Day Out
7th Miss Moneypenny
8th Shameless
9th Humdinger
Prizes
We were generously supported by sponsors, especially Zspars, who gave a complete set of hard rigging which was won by Andy McKeown in Partial Pleasure who will now, of course, be uncatchable. Sailmaker Elvstrom and Gill also kindly gave us some great bags and in quantity enough so that we all won something.
The next 707 event is at Royal Forth Yacht Club at Granton on the 24/25th August.