Keelboat Endeavour 2025 at the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club
by Petru Balau 25 Mar 22:59 AEDT
22-23 March 2025
Keelboat Endeavour 2025 © Petru Balau Sports Photography / sports.hub47.com
Joe Cross, Russell Wheeler, Matt Hitt and Tim Lees, representing the Sonata class, won the 2025 edition of the Keelboat Endeavour, hosted by Royal Corinthian Yacht Club, in Burnham on Crouch, Essex, over the weekend of 22nd and 23rd of March.
Six teams lined up to the start of the 2025 edition of the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club Keelboat Endeavour, to compete for the Robin Judah Trophy, commissioned in memory of Robin Judah, one of the founders of the original Endeavour Trophy for dinghies, an Olympic sailor in the Dragon class in 1968, and stalwart of the club.
The wind proved to be a tricky customer on Saturday, making the choice of side instrumental, with the slightest change in wind direction making or breaking a race, while the clubs fleet of five 707s, recently refurbished by Allen Brothers, the global supplier of performance sailing hardware, based not far from the club and with new running rigging supplied by Robline evened the playing field.
Despite the light conditions, with race 8 being very close to being cancelled due to time limits, Edwin Buckley, the Race Officer, squeezed twelve races in the first day, with each team competing in ten.
The Sandhopper sailors, Peter Thompson, Howard Warrington, Alex Warrington and Clara Hunter, back after missing the 2024 edition, narrowly missed beating the sister class, the Squib, by only 3 points and finished the day in sixth place.
The day started perfectly for the Squib champions, Micky Wright and Alex Porteous, with help from Chris Agar and Dave Hyde, with a win in the first race, yet the wind conditions proved to be a bit trickier to handle and they had to wait until the last race for another win, finishing the day in fifth place.
Quentin Strauss, Sarah Burgess, Philip Catmur and Richard Tucker, the Dragon class representatives, needed a few races to get a handle on the 707 spinnaker system, but after the issue was solved, they finished just outside top three, by only 3 points, with a win in the sixth race.
The day didn't start well for the Flying Fifteen class, represented by multiple world champions Graham Vials and Chris Turner and complemented by Andrew Lawson and Chris Waples, which suffered a few breakages, swiftly remedied by the race bosun Nick Milton, had to pick up the pace and finish the day in third place, with wins in races 3, 5 and 11.
The K6 crew, Laurence Crispin, James Bennett, Bertie Barker and Harry Barker, showed enough consistency to finish the day above the Flying Fifteens, by only 1 point, a huge improvement from the last edition and with great hopes for the next year.
Yet, the clear winners of the day were the Sonata sailors, Joe Cross, Russell Wheeler, Matt Hitt and Tim Lees, runners up of the 2024 edition, which not only scored an impressive 6 out of 10 wins, but also never dropped below second place in the overall results table throughout the day.
The day ended with the customary delicious curry prepared by the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club chefs and a few drinks in the club's bar area.
Sunday morning brought dead calm, with the wind almost filling, but not quite and the race officer had to cancel the day of racing at noon.
The Sonata representatives were awarded the Endeavour Keelboat Trophy, a half hull model presented by Robin's daughter, Catherine.
This year's Endeavour Keelboat Trophy was sponsored by Allen Brothers and Robline, while Ksail provided the live results platform.
While many of the competitors travelled from all over the country to attend the event, special mention needs to go to the competitor who was stuck in Spain on Friday afternoon, with no plane to Heathrow and had to take a flight to Paris, an Eurostar train to London, for a quick late night turnaround to collect his kit, before a dash up to Essex, with the Club's breakfast saving the day.
Overall Results:
| Rank | Team Name | Num Races | Total Points | Avg Points |
|---|
| 1 | Sonata | 10 | 41 | 4.1 |
| 2 | K6 | 10 | 33 | 3.3 |
| 3 | Flying Fifteen | 10 | 32 | 3.2 |
| 4 | Dragon | 10 | 29 | 2.9 |
| 5 | Squibs | 10 | 24 | 2.4 |
| 6 | Sandhopper | 10 | 21 | 2.1 |