 |
|||
 |
|
|
|
SAIL FOR GOLD
ENDURANCE RACE 2012
To commemorate the 2012 Olympics the 2nd running of the NCSC six hour endurance race was adopted as the Club’s RYA “Sail for Gold” event. Maybe it was Olympic fever or perhaps the success of last year’s event but this year’s entry was up by 100%. Team names for this year all had an Olympic connection, you can work these out for yourself !
Team Ryan Wenlock Edge (Laser radial)
Team Commodore The Paralytics ( Wayfarer )
Team Adams The Insane Bolts ( Laser Radial )
Team Junior Team Heebee GB (Topper )
Team Jones The Mobots ( Laser Radial )
Team Mason Rita ( Laser Radial )
Team Willars The Trickie Trackies (Enterprise)
Eventually everyone dragged themselves out of bed and up to the clubhouse and planning for the day’s event began. Last year’s inspiration and motivation came from the windsurfers, this year it was the Juniors, all seven of them, who rolled out their topper and demanded some action!!
Last minute crew negotiations were finalised before the transfer window closed and teams assembled in front of the club house for the start. Defending champions, The Insane Bolts, were struggling, their Lady helm had failed to turn up!! The Mobots were well endowed with ladies (3) but all attempts to entice, bribe, and seduce one of them to jump ship failed. The Bolts enrolled Luke Steaggles and hoped that no one would notice that their lady was AWOL.
The race started in tricky gusty, shifty conditions, so difficult in fact that Boggy capsized on the 1st lap ! Eventually teams got into their rhythm and the lap counter (Matthew) started to tick over. By lunch time the wind was really gusting up and the capsize count was rising. Team heebee GB counteracted the increasing wind by adding ballast to their boat in the form of additional juniors, just how many can you fit in a Topper ?? At 12.00 ladies half hour started, where any laps completed by a lady counted double. This coincided with the heaviest winds of the day and the capsize count increased. The conditions were so tricky that the Paralytics reefed down and were suggesting an early finish. Amazingly the Kids just stuck yet another body in the Topper and avoided capsizing all day !! By the end of the ladies session the wind had started to abate and everyone made it to the end !
The picture quiz was particularly tricky this year, especially for the teachers taking part. The kids did surprisingly well however considering there were a number of black and white photos !! their resourcefulness was seemingly limitless!
The end of the race was signalled by the horn and a complicated formula was derived to find a winner, this included laps, lady laps, quiz points, capsizes and PY’s, the final results were as follows
The Insane Bolts 333.3 Disqualified – no lady
Wenlock Edge 342.3 Winners of the Crouch Endurance Trophy
Team Heebee GB 353.6 2nd and 1st Juniors
Rita 369.4 3rd (4 out of 20 in the Quiz (E-))
The Paralytics 370.6 Winners of the seamanship award for reefing
The Mobots 441.4 Good effort with novice crews
Trickie Trackies 472.7 Another good effort
Mark Adams (photo to right pre start preparations & below more photos)
