Thames Classics, 23rd July

[Rupert]

Thames SC are hosting our next racing event (not forgetting the invitation to cruise the Mersey on 9th July) on 23rd July, with the option of joining in the Sunday too.

Thames is an amazing club with a beautiful clubhouse and great facilities, pretty easy to get to, a short distance from Hampton Court Palace. The river is fairly wide (by river standards...) with the interesting addition of a one way system round the island! Charlie and I had a wonderful time when we went 2 years ago. Just don't forget you have to bear away a LONG way when dipping an A rater!

More details on the main events page soon.

[Mr. Ben]

Hi Rupert

Thanks for the nudge towards getting more details out abourt the Thames event. I was disappointed to not make Bosham in the end. Looks like it was a lot of fun - work committments have seriously curtailed my sailing so far this year!

One event that work will not get in the way of is the CVRDA/ TSC Open and Vintage Regatta on the 23rd and 24th July. The event will be a little different this year. CVRDA attendance has always been limited and we thought that this might be due to the additional costs associated with staying in London. So, to hopefully attract more CVRDA'ers and following discussions with the CVRDA cogniscenti, we decided to limit the official CVRDA championship to the Saturday only.

Nevertheless the TSC Open and Vintage Regatta is a 2 day event and we'd love all CVRDA'ers to stay on for both days, not least because you can then attend the legendary TSC summer party on the Saturday night with live music and usually a disco as well. You can then do battle for overall honours as well. Incidentally the Sunday event will be run using CVRDA handicaps also. There is limited camping for those of you on a budget - Chris can fill you in on the delights of 'sunset strip!'

If ever we need your support it's this year. You may have read in the sailing press about planned developments just upstream of the club that, if approved, would ruin or at best seriously shorten the sailing area that the club has used for 140 years. We are fighting this tooth and nail and part of this fight is putting as many boats on the water as we can - especially for our major regattas. So please - we need you!

Better news this year is that the active vintage boat fleet at the club has expanded massively with as many as 10 more vintage Merlins arriving over the winter and sailed at the club on a regular basis. So expect an expanded home fleet to sail against. Some are relatively new to sailing and it would be great to expose them to the joys of sailing at CVRDA events. I believe the Leader assoc will be out in force again - a lovely bunch of folks!

I will issue the NOR, poster and event timings early next week - watch this space!

Cheers

[roger]

Ben,

I am really sorry but work is in the way again and I cant swap the weekends. Seems to be all the wrong weekends this year. Hope you have a great event. I have found Thames to be very friendly
Roger

[Mr. Ben]

Here's more details including the NOR

Vintage Regatta NOR 2011.pdf

(108.1 KiB) Downloaded 323 times

. Once again Guildford Marine have stepped up to be the prize sponsors. We've kept the daily entry fee per boat at £10 but rising costs have hit the party ticket price which is now £25 per head for TSC members and on the day sales though I've negotiated a £15 per head price for all visitors that book up in advance.

Details of local accomodation options etc. can be found at http://thamessailingclub.co.uk/accomodation.php (though the map links dont work anymore) and I'm trying to get all the info onto the club website but it's a bit of a struggle at the moment as some bright spark decided to 'update' the website over the winter and it hasn't worked properly ever since! Best thing to do if you need any more details is to drop me an email or call me. Both are given in the NOR.

Even if you don't pre-book it would be great to get some idea of visitor numbers - can you let me know if you're thinking of coming?

Whilst we welcome anyone driving anything, we expect to have the home Merlin fleet make up the larger part of the fleet so it would be great to have a variety of other classes represented. For example I'd really love to see some Jollyboats on the river - not so mad, when you consider the size of the Raters!

I've got a poster if anyone would care to put one up at their club. Hopefully it will be available on the website in the next few days. I can't make the file size small enough to post it here but please send me your email address and I'll send a print quality versions out to you.

Hope to be able to welcome some of you on the 23rd.

Cheers

[chris]

we are planning to come and may even bring a a very narrow tent! and stay for the evening festivities - well we couldn't miss those could we?
Lois and Chris
MR 507

[FDGorilla]

I'm hoping to be there with the Finn - Short tacking will be good for me......short tacking will be good for me..... short tacking will be painful and slow but I need the practice! Any other Finns coming?

[Mr. Ben]

Hi folks

Only a few days to go to the next CVRDA event. We still have space for 1 tent or possibly 2 on Sunset strip. More details are finally on the club website at http://thamessailingclub.co.uk/news.php ... &Year=2011. If you're still undecided, take a look at the following photo streams.

http://www.abovebelowh2o.com/places/alb ... tml?page=2

http://www.flickr.com/photos/baja/sets/ ... 871555434/

Also a clip on you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pl8H0KRDl8 from the very windy 2009 event. Lovely high speed synchronised do-se-do ing between the handicap fleet and the Raters!

With the new one day CVRDA travellers series format, I hope we'll get to welcome some new faces along with the much appreciated support we've received over the last few years from many of the CVRDA regulars.

See you Friday night or Saturday morning!

[chris]

Thank you Ben and all at Thames for Saturday, as you said the wind was pay-back time for when you last came to Shearwater! but that's life. Sorry we couldn't stay longer but I hope the rest of the weekend went well to.

[Mr. Ben]

Thank you Chris - it was great to see Lois and yourself again.

it was disappointing after an early season of strong steady wind to have a day of very light winds and mad shifts. We ran all the races on the Saturday past Raven's Ait Island and had the unusual situation of tacking to both the upstream and downstream marks with all sorts of wind shift nonsense in between. All three races were dominated by the Merlins of TSC Sailing Sec Nick Hoskins and crew Linda, Ben Marshall and Emma and Steve Collins and Ivo from Minima YC. It was nice to see Nick, in his very unmodified Merlin (with ally mast and wooden boom) taking overall honours though how he does it is a bit of a mystery - he even removes the kicker completely to make sailing more comfortable for his crew!

On the Sunday the wind strengthened and was again at it's best below the island. We therefore ran the races to and from the club start line with laps below the island only. The wind was stronger and more predictable and for most of the day was Northerly at the downstream mark, Easterly for 50 yards on the surrey bank, and then Westerly up to the upstream mark with a slight lift to NW on the mark - all within about 300 yds! The joys of river sailing.

Nick and Linda continued to dominate - I was disconcerted to be lapped by Nick whilst he was on the walkie talkie to the race box! Indeed by the end of the weekend Nick and Linda had also secured all the handicap fleet honours; the weekend open series (based on PY's) the TSC Vintage Series (CVRDA h'caps) and the CVRDA Sat only. Ben and Emma secured 2nd in all series. There was a last race charge by Patrick Rayner and crew of TSC to 2nd. When I asked him to explain his last race form. he said that he 'just got cross'. It wasn't enough and put him 4th in the final 2 day tally.

So a weekend of frustrating sailing dominated by those who could read the real wind shifts from the fakes. But lovely sunny weather and good company. It was great to see the Leaders back again and to have a significant contingent from our neighbours at Minima YC. Special thanks go to Jim Champ for turning up on the Saturday in an Int Canoe with the express intent of entertaining us all and for then sorting out sailwave for us! Thanks also again to Guildford Marine for once again being so generous with prizes.

Results from the one day Saturday CVRDA series are attached

The attachment CVRDA results.pdf is no longer available

Photos to follow shortly.