Nicklin Trophy

2016-05-08 Report by Roger Stollery

This felt like one of the first days of summer with shorts being the order of the day. With a basically easterly wind we operated from the South bank. Initially beating to windward there were the odd northerly gusts, but as the day went on they became more ESE or SE and very light and variable at the eastern end. There were the inevitable frustrating holes in the wind, but occasionally enough wind for the odd burst of planing.

Using the new rubber dinghies a few more buoys were laid …………….a great little boat thank you Martin! As it has a transom I clamped a box to it for keeping Txs and cameras etc away from the water and then used this to take photographs from the boat in Race 11. You and your boats are recorded somewhere on the next pic page.

As there was little or no wind when we arrived and set up, there was a presentation of trophies. The beautiful copper sailed evening trophy was presented to Les Thorn for his win in the Wednesday evening meeting on 20 April. Also the QUAX trophy for special GMYC effort in 2015 was presented to John Townsend. This trophy was not available at our presentation at the 2015 AGM.

Hugh had his short keel and light l lead on his PRIME NUMBER and won the first race easily. Then John Shorrock shone for a couple of races interrupting Hugh’s run of two wins and two seconds. This took him the top of the leaderboard by lunchtime tied with Roger’s UPROAR. Both Les, and John Townsend who was sailing for the first time after coming back from his holiday in Switzerland, were doing well with a couple of thirds between them.

Roger had to rescue UPROAR from the reeds after Race 10 (not concentrating when taking the scores down) and with everyone’s agreement raced from the rescue boat. This was an amazing experience because apart from taking photographs at the start and buoy roundings etc, UPROAR had to sail itself as, from that low-level, judgement at the other end of the lake was ‘difficult’. However it sailed itself to windward, didn’t apparently hit anything and finished second to Hugh. I was hoping for the photographs to catch some fast planing with spray everywhere, but that just didn’t materialise! It was a very good day’s sailing despite the wind frustrations and Alan’s spreadsheet of results show the merits of the handicap system with only the ‘improvers’ coming to the top of the list.

It was noted that the NICKLIN Trophy, probably our best trophy, was presented for the 36” class racing in 1936, exactly 80 years ago. It was appropriate that our Commodore who had beaten his handicap by 7% should be the custodian of this trophy for 2016.

2016 Nicklin