Pro4Sport Commodores Weekend at Ripon Sailing Club

James McKenzie enjoys the conditions at Ripon © Ian Smith

Abandon ship! © Ian Smith

Ripon SC held their Commodore's Weekend on 3 and 4 July. Racing was held for the Junior and Senior fleets, with Pro4Sport kindly providing prizes for the up and coming and highly competitive junior helms.

Saturday provided glorious conditions for both fleets, with a steady force 3 and sunshine. The Junior fleet were the first to race, and used a figure of 8 course. Steph Ricketts and Nathan Mather jostled for the 1st place throughout the race with Ricketts overhauling Mather to claim first place. The wind conditions on Sunday reduced the fleet somewhat, but Ricketts and Mather were determined to get in enough races to qualify and were joined by James McKenzie who'd been away at an open meeting on the Saturday. McKenzie claimed race 4 pushing Ricketts and Mather back 1 place each.

Knowing he would be unable to qualify McKenzie very kindly offered to retire from the race and as the wind got up it looked less and less likely that the scheduled 5th race would take place. Watching the Senior fleet struggling with the by now much stronger wind the race team decided to abandon the final Junior race and award prizes on the basis of 3 out of 4 races sailed. It was fantastic to see children as young as 6 taking part - many of whom have only started sailing this season.

The Senior fleet were racing on personal handicaps based on results from the previous season and everyone was very keen to see how the handicaps affected the results. Having looked at the system used by Lymington Town SC some tweaking was done to the outer bands of the handicaps to modify some rather strange early results and by the end of Saturday the Race Team were happy that they had a suitable system in place. John Rintoul and Peter Smith (Streakers) led the pack at the end of day one.

Day two was beautifully sunny but the forecast high winds (and, for some helms, a late night the night before) dampened enthusiasm for some. Those who did sail either spent a lot of time swimming or enjoying the fantastic planing conditions, which caused so many capsizes that 3 safety boats were deployed for the afternoon races. Rintoul and Smith lost out badly due to some lengthy capsizes but Richard and Millie Pryke showed everyone how to sail an Enterprise fast and won the event overall.

Juniors results

1st Steph Ricketts, Topper
2nd Nathan Mather, Topper
3rd Tash Myers, Tera
4th Niamh Robinson-Wakefield, Topper

Seniors results

1st Richard and Millie Pryke (Enterprise)
2nd Philip Benn and Ewan Byers (RS200)
3rd Andy Clark and Pete Wakefield (Enterprise)
4th James and Sue Ricketts (RS200)