RS200s - 18/19 April 2015 - Report, Results and Photos

Training Day

Fisherrow is becoming the traditional venue for the first RS 200 Scotland tour event of the year, with training taking place on 18th April and the first Lomo Scottish sprint series on 19th.

Feverish preparation had been taking place over the preceding months ranging from buoy and ground tackle checking/repairs to producing sailing instructions, but as is usual with FYC, various people stepped up to the mark (no pun intended) and resolved the issues.

7 boats turned out to training, on a windy Saturday, with brisk north easterly blowing onto the beach causing some interesting launch and recovery conundrums. The rib handling skills of David Banks improved dramatically over the day as he was expected to get closer and closer to the boat being trained. No means feat in the ‘lumpy’ sea conditions. Funny how you generally go to bits when on camera!

The finale to the training was a series of short races and  the “piece de resistance” / comedy gold moment being  Carol Jones sailing along with no helm, with Tim having exited the boat during a manoeuvre. Carol remained blissfully unaware of the situation, gallantly attempting to keep the dinghy upright until the laws of physics took over! She finally found her helm swimming back to the boat, 30 metres away, best of all it was captured on glorious video! 

Photo by Amy Lennox

After a warm up in the club house the gory details of the training videos were looked at with the aid of the odd libation. An excellent meal of Soup, Moroccan Chicken and the famous ginger and pineapple ‘splodge – yet again by special request! followed by a special presentation of prosecco and a surprise birthday cake to the Masterchef Carol who was celebrating a rather big birthday. The cake, made by Mrs Commodore Kirsten, was in the shape of the Jones' soon to arrive retirement motorhome (photo by Amy Lennox). Tim was questioned over how long he had to sit to allow the icing figures to be modelled such was their lifelike details!

A few hardy souls lingered in the bar until fatigue pointed to bed.


 

Race Day

Sunday dawned with a heavier wind, overcast with a chillier easterly wind. Some attrition to numbers had taken place leaving 11 dinghies to race in what can only be called testing conditions but with some excellent surfing waves and phenomenal broad reaches. The odd capsize livened thing up and the fast race turn around meant nobody had time to cool down or even get a drink!

The final placing had Sam Thompson in first place followed by Ben Wilcox in Second and Ronnie Millar in third place. All in all a great weekend of sailing, hospitality and the renewing of friendships. None of these events can take place without the support of a large group of volunteers who man safety boats, collate results, cook, wash up and so on – a big thanks must go to them and Fisherrow can be well satisfied with a well planned and executed event which is a great credit to the club.

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