Thames Sailing Club
Open and Vintage Regatta 2008
Open and Vintage Regatta 2008
The Thames Sailing Club Vintage and Open Regatta has been a featured event for the club for many years. Primarily the Vintage event has been for the Thames A Rater fleet to offer the restored wooden examples an exclusive trophy event. Nevertheless the entire Rater fleet has always competed with an overall award being made alongside the vintage competition.
In 2008 this approach was expanded and applied to a handicap fleet of smaller dinghy classes to reflect the changing focus of the club away from any specific classes other than the Raters and towards the establishment of the Thames Sailing Club as London’s Vintage sailing club.
The handicap fleet racing featured as the first round of the 2008/9 Classic and Vintage Racing Dinghy Association’s traveler series. Of the 16 or so visiting boats eligible for the vintage award, many were new to both the TSC and CVRDA with the furthest travelled visitors hailing from Scotland. The fleet was a pleasingly eclectic mix of classes featuring some rarities that included a Fleetwind, a Cherub, Merlin number 6 and the TSC Vice-Commodore’s self-designed and unique Heatwave.
The last round of the 2007/8 CVRDA series was held the previous weekend at a very blowy Netley. As a stable high settled over the UK during the following week it was almost inevitable that the Thames event would be characterized by hot sun, cloudless blue skies and little wind.
The handicap fleet only sailed on Saturday morning on a course downstream from the club and Raven’s Ait Island to take advantage of the slightly better wind conditions that the less sheltered banks provide. Nevertheless a very light prevailing Easterly made for very changeable and challenging conditions.
The very new and all Carbon Fibre National 12 of Mike Day and Anne Murch led from start to finish for race 1 with the Fairey-hulled Albacore of Martin Hayward from Maidenhead SC taking the top Vintage slot.
For the 2 races in the afternoon the Handicap fleet sailed a course set in front of the clubhouse. Unfortunately by this point the wind had died almost completely so those who attempted to race had to chase the slightest zephyr to make headway against a fortunately light stream.
For overall honours the National 12 team made a clean sweep of the day. Behind them a good scrap developed between Hayward in the Albacore, the Merlins of Harry /Miles Ellens and Nick Hoskins/Jack Cooper, and Nick Clibborn in his lovely early International 14. Ultimately it was Hayward that took 2nd place overall and 1st place in the CVRDA handicap results.
The Rater fleet made better use of the windless conditions in the afternoon for 3 back to back races held in the downstream area used by the Handicap fleet in the morning. Andy Chrisitie, the race officer set an ambitious 5 laps, thankfully shortened to 3 laps that nevertheless took an hour to complete. Inevitably the conditions led to much milling about for the lead boats during the inter-race breaks. To kill time the crew of Osprey headed for the promenade snack bar to get ice creams. Lady Jane had one crew member go AWOL during one of the inter-race breaks but managed to pressgang a replacement rapidly from the riverside. Ian was known to Nick Fribbens and Mel Hardman, and willingly accepted the Queen's shilling.
The race officer decided to have a windward start for the next two races. For the final race the wind had reduced to almost nothing, which left many of the fleet stuck inholes around the course.
Consistently throughout all races the lead boats were Spindrift, Osprey and Lady Iona although, after a particular bad start on the final race, Lady Iona managed to pip Opsrey to 2nd.
The race for the Vintage Rater trophy was hotly contested between Ulva (built 1898), Carina (built 1902), a miraculously recovered Vagabond (built 1907) which had suffered a snapped mast only two weeks previously, and the visiting Vanessa (1902) that had made the long journey by river from Upper Thames Sailing Club for the event.
Sunday was planned as spectator day with commentary kindly provided by David Henshall from Netley. A total lack of wind forced all competitors to become unwilling spectators as racing was first postponed and eventually cancelled for the day. Instead entertainment was provided in the form of an all-comers aggressively competitive no rules Topper paddle race with each heat producing increasingly outlandish and unsporting tactics.
Overall results for the weekend were drawn from the Saturday’s results and the prizes, courtesy of The Dinghy Store (www.dinghystore.co.uk), awarded accordingly. Our thanks go to Mike at the Dinghy Store and to David Henshall for managing to produce an entertaining commentary on the Sunday despite the lack of racing to comment on!
See lots more photos from the weekend here>>
Results
Page last updated: 05/09/2008 14:13:42
Sitewide navigation
