Phantom Open at Rudyard Lake Sailing Club

Rudyard Lake Phantom Open © Ade@Inspired Images Photography

Rudyard Lake Phantom Open © Ade@Inspired Images Photography

Rudyard Lake Phantom Open © Ade@Inspired Images Photography

Rudyard Lake Sailing Club welcomed six Phantoms on the 8th June for a joint open meeting along with the ILCA class. The forecast North West wind at 10 to 15 knots materialised resulting in a wind direction pointing down the length of the lake enabling long beats with fast challenging reaches and runs.

The small but perfectly formed fleet enjoyed three challenging races of around 60 minutes each, one in the morning followed by lunch, then two back-to-back in the afternoon.

Adam Froggatt of Chase SC continued his excellent start to the season with a win in every race based on conservative starts, good boat speed and generally smooth sailing with sound tactical choices. The four sailors behind, Andy Pyett, Andy Smith, Jim Hopton and John Harrison arguably had the most fun with close racing all day as they swapped places throughout every race, indeed most legs or mark rounding's saw changes fully vindicating the principle of chasing those 'marginal gains' in boat prep. The overall finishing order was determined on the final lap of the final race

It's great to see how well the modern Phantom rig works in such challenging conditions which was borne out by the sailors weights being in the 80 - 90 KG range, the beast has definitely been tamed! However, special mention should go to Matt Gardiner who has recently returned to sailing and also new to the class, sailing an older boat with alloy rig and Dacron sail, good effort!

The fleet culture of sharing ideas and discussing what works well continues with Adam and Jim being very open and supportive and we look forward to the class training days at Northampton on Friday 14th June prior to the Inlands and then at the Hollingworth on Saturday the 6th July with the open meeting on Sunday. We're also looking forward to several other open meetings over the coming months and will hopefully see good fleets and handicap events such as Filey Regatta and Abersoch Dinghy Week... All we need is sunshine to make it a great summer!

Thanks again to Rudyard for hosting the Phantoms and putting on an excellent event which was extremely well run and made the most of the great facilities at the club.

Overall Results:

1st, Adam Froggatt, 2pts
2nd, Jim Hopton, 5pts
3rd, John Harrison, 5pts
4th, Andy Smith, 8pts
5th, Andy Pyett, 9pts
6th, Matt Gardiner, 11pts