RS100 Sprint Champs at Rutland SC

by David Smart on 17 Apr 2014 Rutland RS100 Sprint Championship - Twelve races in two days, with no discards (Damn - We all need discards!) was going to be a challenge and writing this up two days after the event, the muscles are still recovering from one of the best weekends of sailing to be had.

The club and race team completed a Herculean task for four RS classes, with one race team managing five flights of races in a never ending string of flags and guns. Although the 100s were a smaller class with seven sailors taking part, the sailing was as close as you would want to get without getting intimate, with podium places not decided until the end of the last race.

It would be tedious to run through each race, so I shall simply highlight the alternative prize winners to provide a flavour of the event.

The time-keepers prize – while there were four contenders for this coveted prize, there was only one winner. Huw Powell had trouble fitting his tow bar in the morning and had to make an impassioned plea to his local Audi garage to fix it. That meant he was going to be late, so smiling at all the flashing police cameras he phoned ahead to rally support. He arrived at the sailing club 40 minutes before the start of the first race. After frenzied rigging with the help of other sailors and their wives, he flies out to the start where the guns are already going off. Four sailors line up for the first start, all vying for the pin end, with Huw Powell getting a great start ahead of Mark Harrison, Greg Booth and Mike Adams. The other three realised that it was actually the one minute gun. Huw arrives late but starts early. Genius!

The multi-event prize – Greg Booth is well known for his consistency. He continued to demonstrate this on Saturday by swimming in all six races. Mind you, he did not restrict himself to swimming, he was also seen to attempt a number of different dives of varying difficulty, including a complete somersault out the back on a spinnaker hoist. That earned him a full 6.0 for technical difficulty, but did nothing for his results in the competition that the rest of us were taking part in.

The medics prize – This was claimed by Colin Bird, who showed fighting spirit throughout the weekend, and ended up with an impressive set of bruises for his efforts. Indeed his bruises had bruises, as did their offspring.

The what-if prize – Al Hall claimed this, starting his list of excuses before the start of the first race, when he announced that he hadn’t sailed since the 2013 Nationals. His form improved and on day two he found himself leading race 10, but disappeared from view on the first run. He claimed he was set upon by the RS200 fleet and didn’t survive the attack. Suffice to say he didn’t win the race.

The ungentlemanly behaviour prize – David Smart claimed this by not only being callous enough not to fetch Huw’s trolly for him at the end of Day one, but then rubbing salt into the wound during the critical last race. On rounding the last leeward mark before the spinnaker reach to the finish line, Huw came screaming into the mark on starboard claiming water on David approaching on port. Huw gybed round inside David who slowly luffed Huw until gently clipping Huw’s boat with his bowsprit. David called ‘protest’ to which Huw’s response was ‘Do you really want me to do my turns?’ David simply responded in the affirmative to take a very important second from Huw. David did then fetch Huw’s trolley, but the damage was done. We expect this behaviour to cause retribution at the Nationals in Weymouth at the end of May.

The smug prize – Mike Adams was sitting happily at the end gleefully telling everyone how he was looking forward to going to France for a week and enjoying the RS100 Eurocup event in Lac du Dur over Easter. Nobody else was jealous (really?).

Overall:

While David had sailed very consistently and had not been one of the four to sail off on the one minute gun in the first race, Mark and Huw had amassed consistent series meaning any of the three could win come the last race. David simply needed to finish in the top three and not more than one place behind Mark. The gun was taken by Mark and this explains the ungentlemanly behaviour of David (see above) which meant that David won overall from Mark and Huw.

Battle will be rejoined at the POSH regatta in Paignton on 10 RS100 website