Thresher takes the inlands

Report and results from the OK racing at Northampton Sailing Club

Despite the forecast of very light winds, 30 OK Dinghies turned up at Northampton Sailing Club for the 2007 Inland Championships. Three sailors clicked in the very light winds with Tony Thresher walking away with the title, the veteran trophy and, for West Oxfordshire Sailing Club, the team trophy.

Alex Scoles had the honour of leading round the first two marks in all three races on Saturday. However he only managed to convert race two to a win. In the first race he let through Neil Goodhead and Thresher on the very tricky upwind legs. Thresher, sailing an old wooden O’Donnell hull he had just acquired demonstrated exceptional speed and good tactics to place second again in race two and then went on to win the final race of the day from Terry Curtis and Scoles. Overnight Thresher led by three points from Scoles, with Goodhead one point further back.

Sunday dawned flat calm and cloudy. After a short postponement race four started in little more than a zephyr and turned into a race of ups and downs for most of the fleet. However Goodhead found more pressure out of the start and led all the way, with the occasional bit of pressure from Curtis. Scoles started badly and played catch up and finally moved into third at the final gybe mark. Thresher took fourth from Robert Deaves by less than a second, but it was enough to give him the title as all further racing was abandoned. For a while everyone thought that Goodhead had won but a closer look at the sailing instructions revealed no discard after four races, so Thresher became the surprised winner and all those who had been black flagged in race three had to carry a large score.

The weekend was quite encouraging for the class with five juniors taking part and the light winds allowed them to really shine and provide notice for future years. Tom Lonsdale sailed exceptionally well to finish sixth overall and won a carbon tiller extension generously donated for the first junior by C2 Marine. Lonsdale also won, together with Thresher and Ross Lonsdale in 10th, the very attractive Blithfield Stump for the best club.

		R1	R2	R3	R4	Pts
1	Tony Thresher	2	2	1	4	9
2	Neil Goodhead	1	3	5	1	10
3	Alex Scoles	3	1	4	3	11
4	Terry Curtis	4	5	2	2	13
5	Robert Deaves	5	6	6	5	22
6	Tom Lonsdale	11	4	8	6	29
7	Julian Burnham	10	15	3	10	38
8	David Rollinson	16	8	7	8	39
9	Ed Dutton	18	9	9	20	56
10	Ross Lonsdale	14	13	12	19	58
11	Andy Turner	7	10	31.0 BFD	11	59
12	Dan Ager	9	7	31.0 BFD	14	61
13	Keith Byers	15	14	10	22	61
14	Anthony Rich	8	11	31.0 BFD	13	63
15	Simon Shaw	17	18	11	17	63
16	Jack Cracknell	20	20	16	12	68
17	Keith Dutton	13	19	31.0 BFD	7	70
18	Paul Pike	23	21	13	16	73
19	Richard Burton	19	16	31.0 BFD	9	75
20	Alex Hobern	21	17	15	24	77
21	Jon Fish	6	12	31.0 BFD	31.0 DNS	80
22	Deryck Lovegrove	12	22	31.0 BFD	15	80
23	Garth Thompson	22	23	14	23	82
24	J Walder	24	24	17	27	92
25	Chris Biscomb	25	25	18	25	93
26	Roger Cooper	28	27	20	26	101
27	David Taylor	27	28	19	31.0 DNS	105
28	??	DNC	DNC	DNC	18	111
29	Mary Readyhoff	DNC	DNC	DNC	21	114
30	Colin Page	26	26	31.0 DNF	31.0 DNF	114