Spring Fling at Ripon Sailing Club
by Lucy Priest 4 Apr 02:33 PDT
28-29 March 2026
The weekend of 28/29th March saw Ripon Sailing Club get the main season off to a flying start with its Spring Fling. The weekend opened with a short course racing event running alongside Easter ROTTERS.
The aim of this event was to provide up to 8 races on a compact course, providing plenty of opportunity for tight, tactical racing, particularly at starts and mark roundings.
Any hopes for a nice gentle start to the season were dashed by the weather. The forecast had been promising a fairly breezy weekend and it certainly wasn't wrong, though the race officer was disappointed that his new anemometer didn't arrive in time to confirm the Saturday gust speeds.
The ROTTERS race squad were herded out to join the rest of the racers, while the Intermediate groups were initially held ashore while the coaches worked out which bits of the lake were going to be most accessible without getting in the way of the race course. Chris volunteered for joyride duty and spent the day taking a succession of novice juniors out in the Cadet, completing a couple of the races when the starts happened to line up with crew changes.
With racing well under way, but the rescue boats being kept busy, the top Intermediate group were released to head over towards the island where they were able to take advantage of a sheltered corner to work on upwind sailing. Over on the race course Oscar M was setting the pace. A wipe out with breakages ended Matthew M's day early after a second place in the first race, and Race 3 saw a couple more sailors retire before the race team decided it was time for lunch.
After lunch (and the traditional boat park egg hunt) a depleted race fleet headed back out, with several of the adult sailors having called it a day and a couple of the younger ROTTERS dropping back into the Intermediate groups for the afternoon. The average wind speed had dropped, but there were still plenty of interesting gusts coming through from time to time. Another three races were fitted in during the afternoon session before the race team called it a day, while both Intermediate groups spent more time on the water with Jamie B last man standing in his Topper and Chris eventually running out of crews for the Cadet.
The event prize-giving saw Oscar M take first place, with Tom HB in fourth place awarded the prize for first adult sailor. After prize-giving many of the younger sailors headed off, but the club house filled up even further as everyone settled in for a sailing themed pub quiz run by Chief Instructor Jimmy and a fantastic chilli meal prepared and served by Jill H and the galley team and Frankie behind the bar.
Sunday's racing was for the Methuselah (over 60s), Junior (under 18s) and Inbetweeners Trophies. Fleet numbers were definitely influenced by the forecast as it was supposed to be both wetter and windier than Saturday. In reality the morning wasn't as windy as Saturday, and even the expected heavy rain was more like heavy showers, although the forecast was predicting the conditions to deteriorate as the day went on. In view of this, the race officer decided to run two races back-to-back in the morning with a single afternoon race to follow. This caught a couple of sailors out, while a couple of others realised too late that the weather was better than forecast.
In the end only the two morning races were sailed with Bernard Clark taking both wins in his OK ahead of James and Sue Ricketts in their RS200 while in the Junior races Callum P and Matthew dB took one win each.
The Easter Egg trophy for Bronze, Silver and Gold fleets will be sailed on Sunday 5th April, before the Spring racing series start on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th April.