Dear Members,
Once again we are getting to the end of our summer season, with 2 events before we close down for the August holiday period. The first is this Saturday, the Marblehead event for the Arcadia Trophy which we hope will get good support like last month’s Nicklin Trophy, when we had 10 boats sailing practising for the National Championship the following weekend. The club had 6 members competing in the Nationals, which must be another record! Congratulations to Peter for coming 2nd to Brad Gibson and CJ Vice in 11th, the only 2 in the top half. Martin, in particular would like this event to be well attended to put on a good show for someone new to radio sailing, who won Martin’s prize of a day radio sailing that he offered at his bowls club. The weather is continuing to be good so should be a good day at Abbey Meads. Please let me know whether you are coming or not.
The 2nd event is the final event of the Wednesday Summer Series which should be very exciting as any one of the top 4 as shown in the attached Summer Series results could win. This set of series is a great success building up our numbers. In the first winter series last year we started with events with 4 or 5 boats with a total of 10 taking part in the series, where as now there are 15 who sailed and an average close to 9 taking part. Let us hope that this continues and with Mike Wilkie’s helpful communication with Hampton Court DF 95 sailors who cannot sail because of weed we hope to expect more whilst this continues.
For those members who didn’t attend our 90th Anniversary there is the history booklet of GMYC and the Marblehead Class written for the anniversary event at the Mermaid Trophy and now extended in version 4 available from Roger. 10 of these were printed and given away as a prize to the top 10 In the National Championship.
What has given me great excitement this week is waiting for the results of the 5.5 metre World Championship in Hanko, Norway. My friend & designer colleague, Dave Hollom has used the example of my idea for the revolutionary CLOCKWORK ORANGE model A class, that I designed in 1971. This was to sacrifice sail area for a more easily driven lightweight bulb keeled hull, which now has come to fruition at full size level by the boat, Jean Genie GBR 42, winning both the Scandinavian Gold Cup and the World Championship in the final race last Tuesday. Neither of these events have been won by a British boat before, so it is quite a coup. The photographs of these 5.5 metre yachts are superb taken by Waldringfield Sailing Club OK sailor, Robert Deaves and are well worth a visit on the Sail-World website. In particular there are 2 short bits of video showing the boat surfing down the waves, one on a 5.5 metre Facebook page and another more or less at the end of the Day 2 Scandinavian Gold Cup video.
I look forward to seeing you at these coming events.
Cheers, Roger
