South Bank Sailing Club Blog

Weather – Sunny, cold Wind – F3/4 Course – There and Back Again Competing Boats – Albacore 1, GP14 1, Solo 1, Lasers Various Downriver Start – Almost on time!! Dead RO Boat Batteries – ! Safety Boat Swaps – 1 Downriver Race – Uneventful Downriver Finish (OTW) – 1st Ben and Sina (Albacore) 2nd= (We can only time to the second!) Jakob (Laser)and Leo (Laser) 4th El (Laser) 5th Joshua (Laser) 6th Sara (Solo) 7th Amy (Laser) 8th Henry (Laser) 9th Allan and Stephanie (GP14) Tea Break – RO and Assistant (I say assistant, but Ana did all the important stuff) Upriver Race Start – Yes Upriver Race – Windier? Capsizes – 3? Upriver Race Finish (OTW)- 1st Ben and Sina (Albacore) 2nd Allan and Stephanie (GP14) 3rd Henry (laser) 4th Amy (Laser) 5th Sara (Solo) 6th Jakob (Laser) 7th El (Laser) 8th Joshua (Laser) 9th Leo (Laser) OVERALL (Corrected Time) 1st SARA (Solo) 2nd Ben and Sina (Albacore) 3rd Allan and Stephanie (GP14)...

  Sunday 18th November   Campbell 9 Race Report A lovely brisk winter morning with not a breath of wind. The usual diehards trickled in and there was the usual will we won’t we discussion. The Old Man shook his head “Aarr unless they telltales flow them boats won’t go” and went in to have a cup of coffee muttering “ A 7.4m tide! They might go but they won’t come back”. When he came down, hardly a leaf had moved and Stephanie thought not, but Sunshine Sara had the cover off and was stroking her Solo to reassure her. Renato had taken the cover off his torpedo so cleverly disguised as a Laser, there was no wind but there was a tangible feeling of desperation. Any minute and the RO would be labelled defeatist. He had to compromise so he agreed a race with a 45min postponement and the threat was lifted.   Daniel with son James in the SB, laid a minimal sausage on the Fulham bank and it seemed that feeble air currents did disturb the surface in mid stream but not near the Fulham bank.   ...

For the first weekend of November and a cold north-westerly breeze, there fourteen keen sailors arrived at the club to sail. They all settled into (or onto if you’ve got a laser) their eleven boats. Every single person on that start line are phenomenal sailors; it could have been anyone’s win. It was going to be a great race to watch. The course was a triangle, first buoy of which was the second rowing mark by the milestone to try and provide as much of a beat as possible, with the second mark upstream on the Craven Cottage side of the river, with a run back to a mark just upstream of the line. The triangle had 6 laps, so I hope everyone could count… There was a bit of a breeze of 10 knots gusting 15 with a gust coming through on the start line causing a few capsizes before the race began. The start bell went, with Johnny, Jamie and Sally all having great starts. The enterprise with their crew of three (Allan and Steph + a little one hitching a ride with Steph) had dec...