South Bank Sailing Club Blog

Race report – Goodwin 7 – 17.2.19   Ten boats took to the river for this race, no doubt drawn by the mild temperature, sunshine and steady southerly wind. Ben & Elaine were in the Albacore, Allan & Steph in an Enterprise, Sara, Graham and Johny were in Solos, and everyone else was in a laser with full, radial or 4.7 sail. With the larger then usual number of boats for this time of year and the need to watch out for two of the rowing clubs holding a cup race it was not the smoothest of build-ups, but after a false start (sorry to all for that) the race eventually got under way. By then the wind had moved more to the south west, making it an easy decision to choose the Fulham side of the gate course that Gary and John in the safety boat had laid out. Renato was ahead after the first lap, followed by the Albacore and Enterprise. By lap 3 Ben and Elaine were ahead on the water, making good use of the occasional stronger gusts which had caught one or two other boats out o...

Despite incredibly strong winds all through Saturday, Sunday mercifully seemed calmer and the wind was doable for a downriver race.  With a lot of the usual suspects not able to come, I half thought we might not get enough people to sail but sure enough they eventually started to drift in.   It was good to see Simon Harrison who had brought an experienced Dinghy sailor friend with him, and they decided the Xenon was for them.  Sina paired up with Leo in her 420 and both Henry and Renato both went for radial sails on their Lasers. I was a bit concerned that things were starting to go wrong when Jane pointed out I had flown the club flag the wrong way up……(uh oh)  but having put that right things started to improve!  Luckily for me we had an excellent safety boat team and many thanks to both Graham and Ray who both stepped in at the last minute to replace John and Polly who both reported in on the Saturday  as unwell – hope you’re both better. So off they went with Renat...

After some gentle snow fell during the week it turned out Sunday was a beautiful sunny day with enough wind to sail a four lap sausage on the north bank. Six boats started at the usual 5,4,1,0 minute sequence. But suddenly a seventh boat appeared with Allan and Steph around 5 minutes late and when the rest of the fleet was already turning the first mark. Sally and Henry had a good start and they both had an interesting battle with Martin, a temporary member who came to try the club and had sailed optimist, europe and 29er in Spain but never sailed a laser until now. Behind them the second group was not far behind formed by Sara, Leo and Matthias. On corrected time Sara was probably leading the race. The wind picked up a bit given the opportunity to hike at times and provided an exciting finish: Martin crossed the line first followed within just a fraction of a second by Henry who had a fantastic race. Unfortunately for Martin he ignored the last mark on his way to the finish line and h...

Campbell 4 – 27 January 2019, Erkka and Sina’s report It was a very windy Sunday, 19 gusting 29 knots from the Northwest and as a result the scheduled downriver race was cancelled and we held a race round the buoys on the rising tide instead. There wasn’t much scope for complicated course layouts due to the low water, so we aimed for 5 (very) long sausage laps.   After the usual delay, the race was off to a smooth start with Allan&Steph in the GP14 first off the line, closely followed by Leo (4.7) and Jamie (Radial). Jamie managed to get ahead and had built a 30 second lead at the end of the first lap. Leo and Sally (4.7) followed. The second lap proved more troublesome with Sara capsizing repeatedly not far from the upwind mark and, having noticed a hole in poor Conker, decided to call it a day and ask for a tow back from the Crabtree. At around the same time, the GP14 had a few near misses, Ben & Elaine went for a swim, and Gary retired after a few capsizes. Oh, and it w...