Shanklin Sailing Club Push the Boat Out
by Liam Thom 18 May 2017 06:12 AEST
13 May 2017
Shanklin Sailing Club welcomed more than forty visitors of all ages on Saturday the 13th May as part of the RYA's Push The Boat Out series of events. The weather was perfect with sunny intervals and winds between forces four and five.
The visitors were taken out on some of our fleet of Sprint 15 catamarans as well as a Dart 16 loaned by neighbouring Training Centre Wight Water. All seemed extremely impressed with our boats which were shown to their full potential in these conditions.
The next day we held a mini-regatta for newcomers to the club. As a victim of our own success we had more visitors than Shanklin boats so we had to run a couple of heats before the medals race. Again we had near perfect conditions with a sunny off-shore force four and we had some extremely tight racing.
The best three visiting sailors from each heat went through to the final race with a two lap left handed course.
Fin Dyas, despite having Stuart Pierce as helmsman, had the early lead from Pascoal Fernandes / Mark Pritchard and they both stayed ahead of Fiona Trowbridge / Liam Thom until the second downwind leg when Fiona pulled out a tiny lead. Boats split on the final windward leg with Fin taking the right hand course closest to shore, Pascoal choosing the centre and Fiona opting for potentially more wind out to sea on the left. There were feet between these three at the line but Fiona just had a bow ahead of Pascoal and Fin.
Austin Dyer and Andy Jefferies came in fourth ahead of Gary Barker and Chris Murphy.
A special mention should go to Jane Hill and Mick McLaughlin who both helmed their boats extremely competently despite no experience of catamarans before this weekend.