Rooster South West Challenge Series concludes
by Richard Willows 27 Mar 2015 12:02 GMT
22 March 2015
Exe Sails Starcross Steamer 2015 © Richard Fryer
The three event South West challenge series finished on Sunday, March 22nd with the Wimbleball Beastie. The final event was sailed in a light north-easterly that certainly challenged the competitors with being in the right place for the gusts that came through and staying warm in a breeze that stayed around 5 degrees all day. The early starters probably had the best of the wind but that did not stop the RS400 of Richard Cain and the Osprey of Richard Gary from coming through to take first and second place.
Overall, 15 boats completed all three events and the feedback was very positive for the series and the hope is that it will all run again next year. The three events definitely provided very different challenges with sailing conditions at Roadford providing a cross-lake wind with quite big shifts and marginal planing gusts; the Steamer a slightly lighter breezes and a tricky tide to negotiate across the sandbanks.
The three events ran on consecutive weekends this year, which may have proved difficult and certainly a number of the juniors who competed in the first two events were away at squad training or national events for the Beastie.
Next year the Starcross Steamer moves to early January, but it is likely that the Roadford Rocket and Wimbleball Beastie will retain their approximate dates. The Rocket attracted 52 boats on the water, the Steamer 84 boats, and the Beastie 60, so an excellent turnout across the South West for local dinghy sailors.
The series was won by Richard Cain and Barney Deasley (in an RS400) who had a 3rd and two 1st places. An Osprey sailed by Terry Curtis and Peter Greig were second, with a 1st, 2nd and 3rd to count. The first single hander was a Supernova sailed by Iain Horlock, and first junior was Ben Hawkes from Wimbleball who sailed extremely well to finish with a fourth in the final event on his home water.
The series was sponsored by Rooster Sailing and very many thanks to Steve Cockerill and his team for help with the series prizes, and very many thanks also to John Donovan from Starcross and Tony Paine from Wimbleball who endured a large number of emails in getting this set up, and SailRacer who helped with the Roadford Rocket.
The series results are published here [PDF].