Results / Open Eastbourne Sovereign SC - 09/05/2015

Eastbourne Sovereign sailing club hosted the RS200's and RS800's for their annual grand prix open meeting.

With fewer teams than normal perhaps due to the strong wind forecast 11 RS200's were greeted by 30 knots of breeze and a bumby racecourse. The race officer spent some time out on the water but decided the conditions were too severe and with the tide set to turn making the bumps even bigger made the call to postpone. The call was made nice and early so the sailors were able to enjoy the delights of Eastbourne and Brighton. The club as usual put on a great meal and social that was enjoyed by all. 

Sunday dawned a completely different day with 10 knots of breeze from the south west with a forecast to swing left and decrease gradually throughout the day. This proved to be the case and resulted in some super tight racing for the fleet. 

To put it simply; the fleet got smashed by the dynamic lightweight duo of Chris Catt and Roz McGrane. It was a day for making the most of the available line bias, getting onto the long tack quickly and sailing fast which they executed to perfection in the first 3 races; recording 3 back to back convincing bullets. Once round the up-tide windward they generated a gap and continued to sail away in a very stable breeze giving the chasing pack few options to catch up. 

The rest of the fleet had a lovely time scraping it out trading inches here and there. Ian Martin sailing with brother Chris were the best of the rest and were the only ones to beat Chris and Roz in the final fourth race. Matt Mee and Emma Norris were consistent in 3rd place whilst local sailors Toby Heppell and Calista Paxton from Shoreham put in some impressive windward mark positions to get in amongst the front few, winning the Silver fleet in the process. 

Many thanks to Eastbourne for making the right call on Saturday and running some great racing on Sunday.

Next Grand Prix event is at Itchenor which is always popular with the 200 fleet. 

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Ben at Eastbourne has also asked for constriuctive feedback (good or bad - both welcome) from the sailors who attended - please click this link to help.