Marblehead GAMES event and Stan Cleal Trophy at Three Rivers Radio Yachting Club
by Roger Stollery 21 Nov 2019 11:41 GMT
Marblehead GAMES event and Stan Cleal Trophy at Three Rivers © Trevor Judd
This Marblehead open event is the penultimate event of the GAMES series and attracted ten entries from three clubs. Upon arrival there appeared to be no wind at all and when a boat was launched it took what seemed like forever to get to the nearest mark and back.
Race Officer Peter Popham delayed the start of racing by half an hour, by which time there was the faintest of air movement in varying directions. The RO set a short triangular course to take into account this variation and set two laps.
Those who had practised and had got their sail settings to work gradually pulled away in Race 1 from the rest to such an extent that Roger Stollery's UP, Phil Holliday's GRUNGE and Martin Crysell's PRIME NUMBER had lapped several backmarkers before finishing!
Weed affected Phil in the next, to let Roger win again with Martin Crysell on his tail. In race 3 David Adam had got his jib setting properly on his QUARK and won from Roger and Martin. David won again in the last race before lunch to head the leaderboard with 11 points, ahead of Martin 12 and Roger 13.
The single lap races in the afternoon helped the pace of the event and race 5 allowed Martin to win from David and Phil. Races 6 and 7 were won by Roger. At the start of race 7 his UP and Phil Elford's UPROAR showing off their boatspeed in these conditions and pulled away from fleet having a private battle of their own. In the last race on the day local skipper John Carter sailing a QUARK was delighted to be able to pull away to win from David and Phil.
At the prize-giving Roger thanked Peter for keeping us racing in difficult conditions and the rest of the Three Rivers race team for having the patience to record the results in the very cold conditions.
The final GAMES event for 2019 reaches a climax at the Brass Monkey event at Guildford on Saturday 14th of December, when the main contenders for the Midgley Mug will be Colin Goodman, Roger Stollery, Darin Ballington, Martin Crysell and Phil Holliday and with the Improver's and junior prizes up for grabs.
Results:
1st Roger Stollery Guildford UP 10pts
2nd David Adam 3 Rivers QUARK 12pts
3rd Martin Crysell Guildford PRIME NUMBER 16pts
4th Phil Holliday Datchet GRUNGE 16pts
5th John Carter 3 Rivers QUARK 26pts
6th Phil Elford 3 Rivers UPROAR 30pts
7th Keith Allen 3 Rivers STARKERS 31pts
8th Graham Hetem Datchet QUARK 41pts
9th Dick Grainge 3 Rivers STARKERS 44pts
10th Hugh McAdoo Datchet F5 62pts