News & Reports

A slightly smaller entry than previously was offset by the quality of the 9 sailors, who enjoyed 16 races in superb conditions at Abbey Meads.  The northerly wind straight down the lake was at times at the top end of the A rig strength, giving some exciting downwind legs on the windward leeward course.

RYA pathway coach, James Hadden borrowed Roger Stollery’s lightweight UP and was initially nervous as he had never sailed a Marblehead before, having been successful racing IOMs.  He needn’t have worried as he got a good start in Race 1 and led to finish with a big lead in front of well-known dinghy sailor, Nigel Barrow and Barrie Martin both sailing a STARKERS.  James won Race 2 by an even bigger margin from David Cole sailing a GRUNGE followed by Nigel, who then went on to win Race 3 from Paul Tickner sailing a GRUNGE with James 3rd.  

The results were repeated in Race 4, but in Race 5 Paul came to the front with Nigel 2nd and David 3rd.  James had a technical problem in this race, but came back in Race 6 to win with Nigel 2nd and Bob Iles sailing a STARKERS 3rd having made a magnificent port tack start.  Nigel’s consistency gave him Race 7 in front of Bob Pearson sailing another STARKERS with James in 3rd place. The results were repeated in Race 8 and in the last race before lunch, Paul won from David and Nigel.  

The lunchtime leaderboard was headed by Nigel with 10 points from James & Paul each on 15.

The forecast sunshine never arrived, but after lunch the wind had a touch more westerly direction, which caused a more variable wind that got stronger in some of the gusts.  Enjoying the potential gain in tacking downwind with the swing rig, James was making the best of the extra pressure to keep UP planing for longer with the extra speed helping to win him both Races 10 and 11 from Nigel and Paul respectively.  Paul was also doing consistently better in the stronger wind and won Race 12 from Nigel and James, who with Barrie got the best start in Race 13 to win ahead of David and Barrie.  After some poor results, David finally hit the front to win Race 14 ahead of Bob Pearson and Paul, who went on to win Race 15.  The final race would decide the winner of the event and James finished with his 7th win to beat Nigel & Paul in both Race 16 and the event.  

At the prize giving James thanked Race Officer Roger Stollery for lending him his UP and for the team running the event, which he thought was great fun.  The next Marblehead GAMES event in Guildford’s special 3 event Summer Series is on 17 June for the new Halfpenny Trophy.

2023-04-02 Mermaid pic pages

Results:

1st James Hadden Gosport UP 24

2nd Nigel Barrow Frensham Pond STARKERS 26

3rd Paul Tickner Guildford GRUNGE 34

4th Bob Pearson Gosport STARKERS 56

5th David Cole Hampton Court GRUNGE 59 

6th Bob Iles Poole STARKERS 62

7th Barrie Martin London MYC STARKERS 66

8th Martin Crysell Guildford PRIME NUMBER 74

9th Mark Mortimore Guildford UPROAR 122

Winner of the Best Improver’s prize – Bob Pearson.

Winner of the Vic Cooney ‘Masters’ Trophy – Bob Iles

GAMES results after this event

1st Nigel Barrow 250.1

2nd Paul Tickner 230.6

3rd Roger Stollery 223.8

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

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 4^th 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!

2023-02-01 XASPERACHUN review, fin details & Taxachun mould lengthened, build details & trial

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.”

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

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.