Results / Budworth Open Budworth SC - 29/09/2012

Well, what a fantastic day’s sailing was had at Budworth on Saturday by the RS200s in their Open Meeting. The wind was blowing straight down the Mere (and boy was it blowing), allowing Richard the PRO to set a perfect beat up the lake and a straight downwind leg back to I.

An ambitious schedule of 6 races was planned which had most crews vociferously complaining at the tea break after 4 races, forcing me to keep a low profile to avoid being lynched. But we still managed fit in all the races and to finish by 4:30pm.

The fleet was well behaved for the starts, and with the wind regularly shifting, crews had to concentrate hard going upwind to hold their position, and those who got lucky could make big gains going upwind and try to get clear of the fleet.

However, if big gains could be made going upwind, it was nothing compared to the huge distances that could be made going downwind if you got the boat planning well and rode a gust downhill all the way to I at the bottom. Memorably we went from sixth on the last lap of the last race to first - what a ride!

So with a lot of place changing going on it began to get hard to keep track of who was where overall, and by the end of the racing no one had any real idea of where they had come, with five different boats having racked up firsts.

The windy conditions also kept the rescue cover busy, with most of the fleet capsizing at one point or another. Kevin and Wendy even managed to capsize while in the lead, recover and regain the lead riding a gust downhill.

In the end the scores were very close, with Kevin and Wendy clinching victory from Russell and Vicky on a tie break, with Tony and Sarah third, and Jon Chapman and Sian Joesbury fourth, making it a straight Budworth victory.

As the event was sponsored by Bolle Sunglasses, we also had prizes for the highest placed boats having not previously won sunglasses. Winners were Jon and Sian, Pete Goodyear and Nicola Ellis, and Tony Wilcock and Kate Ledins.

Russell Page