CVRDA Vintage Dinghy event at Roadford Lake Sailing Club

CVRDA Vintage Dinghy event at Roadford Lake © Richard Willows

The vintage sailing event at Roadford Lake held over the weekend of 4/5th July attracted 25 entrants, with the home club providing eight boats some of which were borrowed, including an Osprey, Albacore, OK, Jollyboat, National 12 and three Flying Fifteens. Six SigneT dinghies came from far and wide, including Humberside and Broadstairs which was a truly mammoth effort.

Conditions on the Saturday were quite variable with occasional decent wind patches but with short lulls and big wind shifts, and local PRO Norman Halstead did an excellent job setting the courses and getting the fleets away promptly, with possibly only one individual recall over the weekend.

With all the races being invisible handicap, the racing settled into a pattern with the Osprey, Albacore, OK,Finn and Fireball opening up a gap from the slower boats behind as they tended to accelerate away with the puffs as they came through and this made it difficult for the slower boats to keep up on corrected time, although Angus Cook and Leila Farmer in their refurbished Firefly 2117, fresh from triumph on the Tideway were quite close at times but just off the faster boats.

The first race on Sunday was the Gardiner Memorial race which was a longer race at well over an hour for most competitors and sailed in much lighter and variable conditions. Again, the faster boats went into a lead, with the OK of Commodore Richard Willows stuck a little further back, but on the last lap he picked up some downwind breeze to sail under the Albacore, and then catch up the leading boats who were marooned in the middle of the lake in a substantial lull. This enabled him to squeak into the lead ahead of the Osprey and take the trophy.

After a short lunch break racing continued with the wind even lighter, the PRO sailed two one lap races which in the hot sun and fickle wind seemed quite long enough. Of course, at 4 PM with everyone packing up a thermal breeze came across the lake and filled in, but such is life. The Signet fleet proved to be a revelation with a number of young sailors enjoying some excellent racing amongst the slower boats and performing very well and certainly on the Saturday when the breeze was picking up a bit kept in touch in the last two races extremely well.

The Vintage Sailing Events are an excellent way of keeping older classes and boats racing and this event with a number of older and younger sailors with some truly vintage boats showed that you don't need all the latest gizmos to have fun!

After sailing, competitors were treated to an excellent cream tea and biscuits by Ed Bremner's team of Nicky Brice and helpers, and thanks again to Alan Williams for doing the background organisation and Norman Halstead with his wife Sarah for being an excellent race team with instant reporting of results. See you all next year.

CVRDA Vintage Dinghy event at Roadford Lake - photo © Richard Willows

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