Notice of Race for the Ash Trophy – Wednesday 19th April
WSS 6 Report
Dear All,
There were just 6 entries, but only 5 sailed as Mike pulled out at the last moment. The day was dull with no sun, but there was a light variable breeze from just east of South and occasional light drizzle.
14 races were sailed before 2 PM and Martin and Barrie dominated the winning places with 8 and 4 wins respectively. Other race winners included David Coode and Roger Stollery with one each. Roger was testing a newly refurbished BOTTLE boat 7 and was pleased with its performance, which could not be replicated with his own BOTTLE boat 4.
We had a break for an early lunch and then continued to race with the wind now coming either straight down the lake or from over the right shoulder on the western control area. There are some very fast and exciting runs with everyone in their A rigs under pressure at times. The fleet splits at the 2 blue gate marks no specific advantage from either on the beat and the result was was decided by who found the best route through the variable winds.
A very good mornings racing!
Cheers, Roger
GMYC Success Away From Home
The weekend 4th & 5th February was successful for Guildford members and also for the designer of their boats, Alex Austin.
On the Saturday Roger went down to Gosport to sail in a Vane 36″ Class event with a new design XITE, which is based on Alex’s successful …CHUN designs namely XASPERACHUN & TAXACHUN. After the 2022 Vane 36″ National Championship at Gosport where the original heavy 1973 XASPERACHUN design finished a creditable 4th out of 9, despite being the oldest boat fleet, this set in motion an idea for a new design for an improved performance. After starting a difficult construction method in September last year, involving grinding away the inside of an existing GRP mould, XITE has just been finished. A pic page of the boat sailing on its trials in January is shown attached. The 4th of February Gosport club event was its first time in competition, so XITE went very well indeed and was unbeaten in light airs, even against one of Gosport’s top team of vane sailors.
The following day Peter and Oliver were at Chipstead for their IOM open. Oliver was given the opportunity of sailing Peter’s world champion BRITPOP, whilst Peter sailed the much older Alex Austin design, ISOTONIC, now well out of fashion in the IOM world. However this is still a very good design and the light and fluky conditions did not stop Peter winning 8 of the 15 races to win the event. Oliver managed to score a 2nd & 4th to finish 10th out of 20, his best result in the class so far…
So, thanks again Alex!
The 2023 ICICLE Trophy & Workparty report by Roger Stollery
Whilst the entry was disappointing initially with only 3 competitors, it was good that this grew to 6 on the day after a round robin invitation to local Marblehead sailors. As usual the weather did not follow the forecast and was generally very light, fluky but vaguely in the west north-west direction.
Despite the frustration of running into holes on one side of the course, whilst there was wind on the other side, the close racing was enjoyed whether you were at the front or back of the fleet. As the tide was high after the rain a few weeks ago, we did not need the launching platform and launched directly from the steps.
Quite a long windward leeward course was set to this direction and there was some very close racing as can be judged from the attached results. Rob Vice sailing his UP was the most consistent having to discard a couple of seconds, whilst Paul Tickner sailing his brand-new GRUNGE had the same number of first places. Roger & David Cole had a win each in the first and last races respectively and tied for points, which was broken in favour of David with more 2nd places.
We finished the racing just after 2 PM, by which time Alan Viney had arrived and was working on dismantling the mower that we needed to remove to clear a big space in the clubhouse. It was great that Rob and our friends from Gosport stayed on to help. First of all everything was removed from clubhouse and decisions were made to throw away what we do not need and had not used for years to leave an amazingly clear floor area, which will make it easier to use in future. A photo is attached. In particular the large wooden beams and posts, that were there taking up space for mending the wooden launching platforms were taken away on Roger’s roof bars. Alan kindly brought some more posts which followed the same path and he took away recyclable bits in his trailer. With larger elements of rubbish and stuff to be recycled all went in the back of Roger’s car.
In view of the lack of club member support, we have to give a great deal of thanks to Bob & Gillian Pearson for staying on and helping to move the stuff in and out of the clubhouse. Thanks also to Gillian for acting as Race Officer, starting and recording the scores as well as taking the photographs. In addition thanks go to Alan and Rob for making the task easier.
Do not forget that we have another workparty on Saturday, 29 April for vegetation clearance in cooperation with Marcin, our Polish gardener friend and we hope that there will be a good response to this, whichever class you sail. Please put this in your diaries and come and help.
Wednesday 8th February DF95 WSS 3
WSS 3 report by Roger Stollery
The journey to Chertsey was mainly sunny, but approaching the town the sun disappeared! You could barely see the other side of the lake and that question was asked again, “Are we mad”! It was good to have 8 competitors and especially David Coode with his 21/2 hour drive from Herefordshire. After setting 5 marks for the south south-east wind including 3 windward marks, I tried my BOTTLE boat in what appeared to be no wind, but it sailed off into the mist and I was able to follow its progress down to the 2 blue gate marks, which you could not see from the control area steps! To test whether we could race properly we started a practice race and satisfied ourselves that it might just be OK.
When Race 1 started on the simple windward leeward course, the wind was not cooperative and you could see from the swirling mist that the wind was blowing from every direction, sometimes from the north and sometimes from the south and then sometimes not at all. If you are lucky you might just about be able to see how your boat was reacting to it, but it was extremely difficult. Having done a penalty early in the race, by the time I got to the gate my place was last with the fleet already starting back up the course on the rhumb line with very little wind. The pace of the race was extremely slow indeed there were comments about “paint drying” being uttered in jest.
With nothing to lose I opted to stay near the far bank where the wind was stronger and used the direction of the swirls of the mist to either sheet in or out. With the basically southerly wind my plan was to use this to go some way towards the south bank before reaching back to the windward mark and approach it ‘at speed ‘ from above the normal lay line, whilst the rest of the fleet were struggling in the doldrums. All would have worked well to round the mark first had I not hit the mark with the projecting jib boom of my swing rig! Even a short penalty in next to no wind was not what was anticipated by taking this strange long route. At this point probably after about half an hour there appeared to be no wind and the short leg back to the finishing line was really frustrating, but Mike Wilkie continued to extend his lead and cross the line 1st ahead of myself and Alan Viney, the eventual winner of the event.
The sun had started to burn the mist away, but the lack of wind did not encourage any more racing and we had a long break for lunch before deciding to race again. I had rigged up my new 36″ XITE design, to test the workings of the vane gear on a new pintle plate, which had broken at Gosport on the previous Saturday. The plan was to chase it in the inflatable dinghy, which in little wind should have been no problem. However just as I launched the sun was fully out and the breeze filled in to give me a really hard time on the oars to keep up!
The fleet got back on the water and raced until 2 PM sailing another 4 races, which apart from Race 3 which was won by David Coode, were all won by Alan, as you can see from the results.
Additional GAMES Event 3 added to Frensham SC
Frensham Pond Sailing Club RSG have welcomed the inclusion of their 10r & M open event for the 10 rater Tankard as GAMES event 3, which now changes the previous advert and makes a total of ten events in the series.”
DF 95 Wednesday Spring Series 11 January 23
5 Skippers turned out this morning in fortunately the driest morning of the week, to contest the first of the DF spring series events.
Luckily there was enough west in the wind for us to be able to set a course and use the south bank (the west bank is VERY muddy at the moment) .We set a course with a longish start line and then used each of the two start line buoys as part of the course which put us more into the Center of the lake and gave a much better beat to the windward mark, although the wind was incredibly gusty and changeable in direction, sometimes the boats would tack completely on their own.
We all started in B rigs and stayed in these all day except for Mike who change into top rig during the coffee break and this did give him a bit of an advantage specially in the lulls and helped to give him 3 wins in the day.
We sailed 9 races which overall produced 3 different winners but it was Barrie who sailed well and got the win by one point.
We stopped sailing just after 1pm as the clouds thickened, our timing turned out to be spot on as ten minutes later the heavens opened.
Final Results:
1st Barrie Martin 11points
2nd Martin Crysell 12 points
3rd Mike Wilkie 14 points
4th John Turnbull 23 points
5th Slieve McGalliard 34 points
Don’t forget next race is 25th Jan. Get your entries to Roger by 24th.
Martin Crysell
Cobweb Trophy – 7 January 2023
This was not a good start for GMYC club racing in the New Year, as the conditions were horrid not just because of the continuous rain, but it was cold and the track along the west bank had been used many times since we were last there by the fishermen’s vans. It was so muddy that we didn’t dare take our cars along. As even pulling our inflatable boat and emergency boat along this track was difficult/impossible because of the mud, we launched from the south bank steps. There was sufficient depth to allow launching our Marbleheads without the need for a launching platform.
Having set an angled course to suit the variable south easterly breeze (that was forecast southerly), we realised that this was not going to be good course and so we walked round to the west bank where there was really good course down to the 2 blue gate marks.
It was disappointing only to have 3 of the 5 entries, but Martin, Barrie and Roger actually thought initially that we were mad to sail in these conditions. However with a super C rig breeze it was exciting sailing off the wind and even to windward. With no starting buoys set, we lined up evenly along the line of the steps going to windward to get a fair start and this worked well.
Martin won the first race and Barrie the 2nd, but later had a problem with water in his electrics. The remaining races were shared between Martin and Roger and according to the MYA SSI scoring rule 9.3 the result was down to who won the last race, which Roger managed to take.
After that we decided that enough was enough and went home for lunch in the warm. We rang Alan who was quite happy with that as he wasn’t really looking forward to sailing in the afternoon in the rain and Slieve called in just as Roger was leaving to check whether there was going to be any further racing.
Fortunately, the forecast for Wednesdays’ WSS 1 is for westerly winds, so car parking & launching from the southern steps should not be a problem.
| Race | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Score inc DSC | Place | ||
| Barrie Martin | STARKERS | 03 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 13 | 3 |
| Martin Crysell | PRIME NUMBER | 52 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 2 |
| Roger Stollery | UP | 117 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
2022 Brass Monkey Marblehead GAMES 13 – Finale on 10th December
Guildford Model Yacht Club were concerned about the below zero temperatures in the couple days before this event. We almost penned a postponement notice ‘The Brass Monkey has cold feet! However after a check that there was no ice forming on the day before, the club went ahead with the event at their water at Abbey Meads, Chertsey.
On arrival the discussion concerned whether we were mad to sail in such conditions, but Austin Guerrier, the hard-working secretary of the MYA said that ” he was delighted to be able to get out in the open air and enjoy some sailing for a change”. Anyway it was a beautiful scene, as the sun was just rising and the wind could be ‘seen’ by the swirling mist over the water.
Despite the light winds of 3 mph and below, 8 races were sailed on a windward leeward course, with the DF 95 and BOTTLE boats starting a minute later than the Marblehead start on a shortened course, so that all boats would finish at more or less the same time.
Thanks to Hugh McAdoo, who just came to spectate, he kindly offered to record the scores, which allowed a dozen competitors to take part. Everyone soon became overdressed as the sun on the west bank control area was really hot.
Paul Tickner sailing his new GRUNGE won its first race, but then allowed Peter Stollery’s UP to win Race 2. MYA chairman Phil Holliday’s F6 won the next 2 races with Rob Vice’s UP taking the final race before lunch. This was the traditional Christmas celebration with mulled wine, sausage rolls & mince pies with plenty of time to chat.
Race 6 was won by Austin sailing a GRUNGE, who had now got his concentration level raised after a most consistent series of podium places in the morning. Paul took Race 7 and Martin Crysell, who had prepared the lunch, started well & sailed his PRIME NUMBER away in front on the gust that left the fleet behind and so won very last race! The decision to stop early was not difficult to make as the wind was getting incredibly light and the warming sun had disappeared behind the trees.
At the prize giving, where the prizes were a wrapped present as the entry fee, everyone got a prize. Hugh McAdoo was heartily thanked for doing such a good job as the RO.
Austin was absolutely delighted to have won this event, as let it be known afterwards that this was very first open event that he had won. In such good company, well done Austin!
The Marblehead results:
1st Austin Guerrier, Datchet, GRUNGE 14 points & winner of the Brass Monkey Trophy
2nd Phil Holliday, Datchet, F6 18
3rd Peter Stollery, Guildford, UP 18
4th Paul Tickner, Guildford, GRUNGE 23
5th Rob Vice, Guildford, UP 23
6th Roger Stollery, Guildford, UP 26
7th Martin Crysell, Guildford, PRIME NUMBER 28
8th Nigel Barrow, Frensham Pond, STARKERS 28
9th Nick Charles, Datchet, GRUNGE
The small boat winners
DF 95 trophy, Guildford, Alan Viney.
BOTTLE boat trophy, Frensham Pond, Keith Parrott.
The 2022 GAMES series was won by Roger Stollery, with his son runner-up and Martin Crysell 3rd. The best Improver was Tom Rodger of the 3 Rivers Radio Yacht Club, finishing 6 places up from his 2021 Finishing Place.
The GAMES schedule is available on the Guildford Model Yacht Club website, www.guildfordmyc.uk
