Results / Covenham MSDS Tour Covenham - 13/05/2001

RS200�s at Covenham Mike Saul Dinghy Services Northern RS Tour round 2 was held at Covenham Sailing Club on Sunday 13th May. This should have been round 3 of the series but the event planned for 7th April at Scaling Dam was lost due to Foot & Mouth Restrictions. No such problems at Covenham as access is straight off the road and up the dam wall! Once again the regular band of 200�s from Ripon SC made up the bulk of the entry joined by 3 Covenham boats, 1 from Scaling Dam and 1 from Beaver. The 200�s shared this kilometre square reservoir with the clubs handicap event, a traditional course was set for the handicap fleet while the asymmetrics enjoyed a separate windward leeward course. As well as sharing the water we also used the same start/finish line and Race officer team, just as well this event was not as well supported as some on the tour! Mike Saul/Sophie Hartley managed to win race one despite making a mess of the start. A serious mistake was made by Len & Lisa Metcalfe when they found that following a Vortex is never a good idea, it led them the wrong way round the windward mark, loosing them a few places as they tried to untangle themselves. The light winds made the down wind leg the place to gain or loose places proving that even in displacement mode asymmetric sailing off wind is a highly tactical game. Richard Watkinson/AN Other made the most of the conditions to take second place with Whiteley/Banham crossing the line in third place. Len and Lisa�s mark rounding mistake put them down to sixth place after such a good start. Race 2 saw a slight change in the course so a new windward mark had to be spotted from one of the many other confusing marks dotted around the featureless perimeter of this pond some 30 feet above the surrounding countryside, even the local swans could be confused for marks at times! The man Saul led from start to finish this time with Richard Watkinson using his local knowledge to fight off Whiteley/Banham and Dave & Sue Smith. Andrew Hartley lost out on the offwind leg taking the wrong route after he had made a serious challenge to the leaders on the previous leg, or was it just the luck of the draw as the wind played it�s cruel tricks again? Race 3 showed that even Mr Saul can make a mistake, or did the RO get it wrong? Saul was considered OCS and failed to return to re start so despite a convincing lead he sailed the last race just for the fun of it. Whiteley/Banham managed to hold off Watkinson to the line, Dave & Sue Smith ended the day with what would have been their third 4th place had Saul not been OCS. A few notable names were missing from the entry list, those that made the journey had a good if not exciting days racing thanks to Covenham SC for hosting the event. The next 2 rounds of the MSDS Northern Tour series are on June 9th at Ripon and June 10th at Grimwith with camping and a social event on the Saturday evening at Ripon SC. Can we improve on last years impressive entry?