Northern 1 May

Post date: May 4, 2010 11:19:49 AM

At Killington

The wind gods certainly aspired to frustrate us today and the rain gods also conspired to make some of the sailing not only cold but unpleasant!! In at least one of the races the wind cycled at least 180 degrees within the space of a few minutes which certainly frustrated the topper sailors concerned who were at a loss to explain how they weren’t able to sail in the same direction for longer than 1 minute at a time!!

Anyway, we arrived at the club to find Merchant Taylors’ Crosby waiting at the gate champing at the bit – but at least that helped with the boat rigging as we prepared 9 Toppers, 2 3000s and the 2 bosuns. While the race officer’s face got longer and longer as the wind failed to materialise, progress was made in all other departments. Windermere St Anne’s entered just a senior team and Rydal Penrhos entered two Topper teams and one match racing team. There was incessant course changes necessitating much mark re-laying on the part of both the match racing umpires and the team racing crew. But slowly but surely the races happened albeit in less than much wind for the most part. Early smiles from the Sedbergh match racing team as they beat Windermere, evaporated later as they got beaten by MTS but restored when they won one of the Rydal matches. In the meantime however, Rydal and MTS drew level overall in the match racing with 4 wins apiece and tie break broke in MTS direction so they retained the match racing “Killington Salver” for the third year running. Their new coach (and national 400 champion) has certainly had an impact on them.

Meanwhile in the Toppers again early success by the Rydal Penrhos 1st team was confirmed throughout the race sequence and they clearly won. Their second team squeezed into 2nd place in the final race amidst burgeoning hypothermia and groans at the lack of a shorten course flag! Sedbergh 3rd, MTS 4th.