ILCA Midlands Grand Prix at Trimpley Sailing Club

ILCA Midlands Grand Prix at Trimpley © Sue Webb

Trimpley Sailing Club's hosted their ILCA open meeting on 5th September with reasonable forecast wind and sunshine they were assured of a great day racing.

This was the third last meeting of the season in the Midlands ILCA Midlands Grand Prix 2026 series. Great prizes were up for grabs provided by Trimpley SC and our series sponsor Performance Sailcraft.

A good westerly wind of varying between 8-12 knots allowed for wonderfully competitive close racing with many places in all three races decided in the final minutes of each race. The Race Officer Jacob Blakeway set near perfect start lines which resulted in good clean starts for everyone.

As the fleet headed upwind quite strong gusts came in from various directions and the skill of the leading pack of John Ling, Carl Avery and George Faraday came into play and they pulled away from the fleet, at the last mark Carl rounded slightly wide allowing John to just slip in and take the gun.

After a fantastic lunch provided by Sue and Cat, the fleet got under way cleanly again but this time it was George that led home to take honours. David Burnham had a great race finishing in 3rd and but the taken on handicap buy the two ILCA 6. This time Carl found the shifts tricky and got pushed out by Christine Simon and Oliver, meaning it was going to be a two horse race for the overall trophy.

So at the start of race 3, John and George were tactically manoeuvring to hold each other back leaving themselves a lot of work to do to get back into top positions. This allowed Simon Yeoman to blast away with youth sailor Oliver Davis in his ILCA6 closely followed by Andy Allen and Christine. But in the final stages of the race John eventually caught them all up with George closing in to take the finishing gun in that order.

Ultimately it was a very close event between John and George and with three boats tying on same points for third place with Christine, Carl and Andy. The SIs were clear and therefore using Appendix A to separate them into 3rd, 4th and 5th.

Kindly, the visiting sailors and their supporters, voiced how much they had enjoy coming to Trimpley SC which is a testament to the club's members year after year for putting on a wonderful event.

Once again, thank you to Performance Sailcraft for their continued support of the ILCA Midland series and especially to Trimpley SC volunteers to man the safety boats and help with launching etc.

The final event of the ILCA Grand Prix is at Burton on 3rd October.

Results on handicap: