Sunny mid-winters

A competitive penultimate event for the Laser SB3 fleet

Sunshine and warm air greeted the fleet for the mid-winters, the penultimate event on the SB3 calendar. There were plenty of new faces on the starting block, with Mike Budd, Geoff Carveth and David Bedford now full on joining the fray in newly purchased boats.

At last year’s Midwinters, Dave Cheyne and Pete Harrison tied on points with Craig Burlton, with Craig taking the event on best result rule. This year all three jumped in the Harken ship and made it a clean victory, followed by the Olympic ladies, Sarahs Ayton and Webb.

The Shelley’s continued to nearly win, coming in third, with Geoff Carveth in fourth. It was a boisterous weekend’s sailing, and Colin Simonds, recently crowned National Champion, would likely have done better had he sought average points after a nasty collision in race three. As it was, he still made fifth, counting a 24 th in that race.

Surveying the results board makes the usual reading of mish moshes of results, with little room for error to stay in the top flight. This wasn’t to say it was fluky, as the breeze was consistently favouring the left, with the strong tide pushing down the right side of the course, making it a mad dash to the left, from a usually CB biased line, and if you didn’t get it right, you were in big trouble. Such is the consistency in the fleet, that it really was hard to claw back from a bad start.

Overnight leaders Team Harken, led by a healthy margin from a big group of boats, including the girl teams of the Olympic Ladies, and the Maclaren Ladies. Budd punctured his chances with an OCS, never a good idea in a no discard series, with Simonds counting his 24 th. Carveth was chipping away, whilst the Shelley’s had made their traditional slow start. New faces on the scene, Credo, were looking good, but turned out to be carrying an OCS from race one.

Sunday dawned with more perfect conditions, with the fleet swelled by the Winter Series racers. With 45 boats on the line, it was a spectacular start line. With many nursing mystery flu like hangovers after the party in the Bugle on Saturday night, the results continued to be, at best, varied. Harken was forced to tack off to the unfavourable right, and looked to have thrown it all away, but scraped back to post a decent result. This was just as well, as the Sarah’s finished second in the final race, necessitating the final flourish by Mr Skiddy, rest his soul, with a mighty first and clinching result, to retain, in a way, the Midwinter title.

Next is of Oop North to the final event, the National Inland Championships at Ullswater, where the growing fleet will be hosting those who can’t get enough of it, wish to assist clearing the last kegs before winter closing, or just those, such as Tony Kilby, who see a chance to call themselves SB3 National Champion of 2005, hoping no-one asks which one.