by Rob Clark, 4254 JujuJune 2012
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UK J/24 Class June update
by Rob Clark, 4254 Juju
June 2012
Having allowed the bruises (to ego and body) to fade following the Nationals in Poole I thought it was time to send out a quick update with our current goings on, upcoming events, who's looking on course for qualification to the 2013 Worlds in Ireland and any other items that I can think of.
2012 Nationals - Poole
This year's nationals were on the whole a great success for the class with 28 boats providing the most competitive racing that I have encountered since joining the UK fleet. For those who did not manage to make it we had 2 boats join us from Ireland, 2 under 25 boats, 1 all girls crew, along with the usual old hands and some new faces. Despite a couple of minor issues from the race management side we had some great racing covering all conditions you could hope for - as well as some really fun socials - and with the final top 3 of Hedgehog, Madeleine and 2012 National Champions Serco few could argue that the cream rose to the top.
A special thank-you must go to Yvonne and Emma who, rather than sailing, spent the 4 days watching grumpy, hungry sailors strip down to their underwear to be weighed in and making sure registration was as simple a process as possible for all of us. A full write up of events can be found on the UK class website.
Hopefully this can give us a good base to build from for our future events and with next years Nationals in Plymouth falling between Kiel Week and the Worlds we will be trying to encourage more overseas teams to join our UK crews to boost numbers further.
2012 AGM
As part of the Nationals we had our class AGM. This was very well attended and I'll be sending out the minutes shortly. Thank you to all who made it along and joined in discussions.
2013 Worlds Qualification
Having now completed 4 of our 6 (including the Europeans) qualifying events for boats to gain a place at next years worlds we are starting to get a picture of who is on course and who needs a couple more good results to get their campaign on track. With the best 4 results to count towards qualification Hedgehog and Madeleine only need one more reasonable result to confirm their place with Sublime not far off that mark. Serco and Il Riccio are pre-qualified by their successes at the Europeans in 2010 and 2011 meaning that we could have up to 10 boats representing the UK in Howth. Currently filling the remaining berths are Jawbreaker, Jeli, Jiggy 2, Legal Alien and Team Quattro, however there is a pack not far behind including Hitchhiker, Boomerang, Skilled Services and Chaotic who could all post some big results in the last couple of events.
Weymouth Regatta - Southern Areas (www.weymouthregatta.co.uk)
The next UK event to push your case for qualification is to be held in Weymouth on the weekend of the 7th and 8th July. For the last couple of years this event has featured champagne sailing, wellie tans and some great racing. Plus it is an opportunity to sail in Olympic waters within a month of the games starting up. Please try and get your entries in as soon as you can to give the organising committee notice to make sure the event is one to remember again.
That's it for now, if you have any comments or suggestions please don't hesitate to drop me a line.
Unfortunately I won't see you in Weymouth - the new addition to team JUJU is due to arrive that weekend, though being a product of myself and Emma's gene pool it will probably be late - so good luck to all the crews who make the trip and we'll see you later in the summer.
Best regards
Rob
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