Dear All,
The 2018 ICICLE has been the best event of the year so far because of the wind and sun and of course the competition!
This was an absolutely cracking day’s racing with 16 races in B rig in bright sunshine, but a cold wind 8-15 mph from the east north-east.
GMYC ICICLE 2018
We were delighted to greet Phil Holliday and John Shorrock, who were not sailing at Datchet, and this made for a very competitive fleet. Before the racing started there was a presentation of the 2017 GAMES Improver’s prize, which was a bottle of whisky presented to Peter Dunne, who had finished 16 places above his 2016 placing.
The first race gave an indication of the closeness of racing with Phil Holliday sailing an F 5 in a photo finish with Roger Stollery’s UP and the win was awarded to Phil. Roger then went on to win Races 2 & 3. Phil came back to win Race 4, but let John Shorrock sailing a QUARK win Race 5. At this point Rob Vice had got his UPROAR going well and starting to get good consistent results, either winning or coming second in all the following races except Race 9, which was won by Martin Crysell sailing his PRIME NUMBER. The race winners included Phil in Races 10 & 16 and Roger in Races 7 & 14. With this level of competition Peter Dunne was pleased to get his STARKERS going well and not finishing last on several occasions.
The designer of any new boat is always concerned by how it might perform and whether anticipated problems might materialise. UP has no reverse flare like UPROAR and so there was a questionmark against the new design’s seaworthiness under the pressure of its swing rig. At the end of one downwind leg there was a strong gust which wiped out all the adjacent boats and whilst UP did dip its bow, it popped up again without slowing down and so removed that question mark. The result sheet is attached.
GMYC ICICLE 2018
With the good news that all the entries to the Marblehead Worlds in BIBLIS Germany have been accepted, we are hoping that we shall get more visitors wanted to practice at Abbey Meads.
Cheers, Roger
