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What a Difference a Day Makes

Published 07:24 on 21 Apr 2025

The Easter weekend was a day of two differences brought about no doubt by the weather. A wet and windy Saturday with just 4 sailors followed by a Sunday with an early blue sky and sunshine that brought out the biggest turnout in sailors we've had in a long time. Bring on more of the latter.

Peter Hearne stepped in as Race Officer on Saturday to allow 2 sailors in the Handicap Fleet and 2 in the Solos to go sailing. Not that the Handicappers lasted very long with Rob Upton puncturing his mainsail with his tiller extension in his Finn dinghy and Phil Claybororough finding the downwind legs a bit too much like rock and roll and came home early. That left just the 2 Solos of Paul Craft and Scott Hampton fighting it out around the figure of eight course. With 2 gybes in the course they mostly took the safe route and wore around rather than risk a gybe. Even so Scott went for a swim in his newly acquired boat. All three race wins went to Paul with Scott chasing hard in each race. For full series results click here

Sunday morning couldn't have been more different both in terms of weather and participant numbers. Not a lot of wind although still coming from the east but loads of sailors. Lovely to see the whole Upton family out with Rob having replaced his mainsail and repaired his tiller. Ally, Emilia and James all took club boats out as did Nicky Sharp and John Sharp. The club boats really came into their own and demonstrate just why we have them encouraging folk to get out on the water if they dont have their own boat. Thomas Crawford also had a club Quba out while Mum and Dad, John and Liz were out in the safety boat looking after everyone - oh and we have Liz to thank for taking all the photos! So we got 3 races in throughout the morning in very patchy winds. Race Officer Grant Simmons had again set a figure of eight course with a windward mark laid in the middle of the river to take advantage of the easterly coming straight up the river. All was uneventful until the third race when the Solo fleet decided to play silly whatsits with the start forcing a recall or two - the result of which saw the leading handicap boats come reaching in on their start line with around a minute to go before their start. The irony being that Rob Upton had specifically asked the Solos at the race briefing to stay clear of the handicap fleet during the last minute of the start sequence. Haha! Three races and three separate winners - Mike Commander, K1 in race 1, Rob Upton, Finn in race 2 and Arthur Southwick, ILCA7 in race 3. For full series results click here

Just finishing up with a big thank you to all the members that turned out on Easter Sunday morning and we could see the clubhouse lounge in communal use after racing. More days like this please