2024 ILCA UK Open & National Championships at the WPNSA - Day 1
by ILCAUK 13 Aug 2024 05:51 BST
12-17 August 2024
A perfect start to what will hopefully be a perfect week's racing - Blue sky, 15knts/26knots at 260° and Weymouth Bay at its most splendid. 252 ILCAs sailed out for race 1 and 2 of a week long National Championships.
The 77 strong ILCA4 fleet (44 under 15) were first to launch. Having just won the Topper Nationals last week Jessica Powell was surely looking for a top 3, but this was not to be with Toby Waggett, Oscar Bartlett and Ben Anderson taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively. It's just the first day so all to play for in a six-day regatta.
The ILCA6 fleet had 113 entries so was split into two - Matilda Nicholls, Leo Yates, Jon Emmett and Jack Hopkins all winning one race. When the 60 ILCA 7s fleet arrived back at the dinghy park it wasn't a massive surprise to see all the ILCA6s packed away. With Race 1 having two postponements while in sequence and race 2 three general recalls they were certainly the least well behaved. James Percival-Cooke leads, Finley Dickinson 2nd and James Foster. Just behind, all on 10 points, are Arthur Farley, Kai Wolgram and Sebastian Kempe.
Black on shore the Sponsor of the Day was Tideway Wealth. Tideway's James Baxter wanted to highlight the amazing work the volunteers do to make these events happen so the prize draw saw 3 engrave multitools and Dinner for two at the Shard in London all courtesy of Tideway. Rooster, Ovington Boats, Sailingfast, Noble Marine and Southeast Sailboats provided lots of prizes for the competitors - thank you sponsors.
So a fabulous day's racing kicks off the ILCA UK Nationals. Check out the full results at ilca.uk/nationals-results
And go to the ILCA UK Facebook page to see the live stream.