As skippers arrived at the Harwich & Dovercourt lake, the morning started with light rain and a northerly wind across the pond. Proceedings were delayed for a time as three people who had pre-entered failed to turn up, which required the two seeding races to be reviewed. Even without the three missing skippers the turn out of 17 was very pleasing, requiring two fleets because of the nature of the water.

As the seeding races progressed, the rain stopped and the wind swung to more or less down the pond. As racing continued so the wind swung from one side to the other.

It soon became obvious that Colin Goodman was going to be the skipper to beat, but after three races, Peter Stollery got his act together and started to challenge Colin creating a great battle at the front. This left Vernon Appleton, Graham Bartholomew and David hope to fight over third place, with the rest of the fleet battling for the lower places. Unfortunately David seemed to fade in the later races leaving Vernon and Graham to battle for third place, whilst Colin and Peter continued to challenge each other at the front.

At the end of the day, Colin managed to maintain the advantage he had gained in the first few races and take the win with 10 points followed by Peter on 14 points. This left Vernon and Graham on equal 29 points, with Vernon taking the third place based on count back.

There was some very good close racing with places changing on all legs of the course.  Dovercourt & Harwich is a great place to sail with free car parking and close to the pond edge and when the sun shines and added bonus. Our thanks to Harwich & Dovercourt for hosting the event and to all the skippers who were well behaved.

Report and Results courtesy Geoff Appleton and Photos by Gary Millett.

Harwich & Dovercourt MBC will be hosting the Corden Cup and Round 4 of the Eastern District IOM Championship Series on Sunday 26th June 2016. The venue is Dovercourt Seafront, Dovercourt, Essex CO12 3TA.

The event is an IOM meeting and is open to all MYA members with a certified boat. Please use the MYA Online Entry Form if possible or email Kevin Mullins on (kmullins50@outlook.com) or Gary Millett on (gmillet28@googlemail.com), ensuring to include Sail No.; MYA No.; Frequency; Hull Type; Club and Emergency Contact name and number. Please note the closing date for entry is 10.00 pm 24th June 2016.

There will be a skippers briefing at 9.45 am with the first race shortly after at 10.00 am. No race will start after 4.00 pm and any race in progress at 4.30 pm will be abandoned.

Skippers are reminded that they are expected to sail in compliance with the RYA Racing Charter.

Twelve skippers from 5 clubs and their boats of 8 different designs arrived at Lee Valley’s Clayton Hill lake for the Lifeboat Pennant event. As usual no entry fee was charged but skippers were invited to make a donation to the RNLI to which they responded with a total of £90.42.

This year we seem to have had awkward wind directions on the lake and today was no exception so we had challenging or frustrating conditions depending on your point of view. We set a port rounding triangular course with the start line angled across the lake and the first mark more or less up wind of that. Two laps of that took a reasonable time and kept the boats apart. For many starts a starboard tack was possible but not always and it would have been pointless to change the course as by the time that was accomplished the wind would have changed back to where it was.However the many shifts, swirls and gusts made sure that almost every leg needed a tack or two to complete. Fortunately the skippers realised the difficulty and just got on with the racing with good humour.

Colin Goodman soon made it clear that he was going to be the one to beat by winning four of the first five races races.  At this point where there was one discard,others with reasonable scores were Mark Dennis, who took the other win, with11, Vernon Appleton with 13 and Graham Bartholomew with 15 points.

Colin continued by winning 3 of the next 4 races by which time there were 2 discards, for a total of 7 points while Vernon was now in second place with 17 points, Graham in third place with 23, and Mark in fourth place with 25 points. And so it continued with Colin winning most races to win the event, though Mark won a few more to finish second, and Vernon was not far away in third place. Graham had dropped down somewhat to finish fourth and late run of better results moved John Richmond up the order to fifth.

Once again an anonymous donor kindly provided some bottles of wine for the first 4 places.

Report and Results courtesy of Henry Farley and Photos courtesy Rick Buxton