Saturday 6th November saw 14 skippers from 5 different clubs competing for The Strebor Trophy and Northern District Championships, the 14 skippers also included 3 IOM World Champions.The wind direction for the day was not the most favourable, a South West direction with massive holes and gusts to contend with but ‘A’ rig was definitely still the choice of rig for the whole day.
Peter Baldwin kindly wore the waders to set the buoys with a windward, leeward gate course and plenty of bias on the startline and the leeward gate The first five races were dominated by Rob Walsh and Brad Gibson, with them taking the top two positions in each race, something that never happened for the following 11 races. After completing 16 races, we had 5 different race winners, a bit of rain, a bit of sun, plenty of wipeout gusts but most importantly 14 smiling faces.
It was good to see our visitors and mention must be made to Peter Walters who had travelled the furthest from Lincoln to launch his new Venti design. In the end it was Brad Gibson that took the win on countback from Rob Walsh with Darin Ballington rounding off the podium, all sailing the BritPOP! design. Then in 4th was Graham Elliott sailing his Widget design and 5th was Martin Roberts sailing his Vanilla design.
Much thanks must go to Bernie and Dave Williams for starting us, Jack who stood outside all day finishing us at the age of 92, Judith for scoring us and Joyce for the refreshments.
The next ‘Open’ event at Birkenhead is our much loved Xmas race on Saturday 18th December, entries are now open for this by clicking here or following the links on the home page.
Photo’s are from our photographer on the day – Dave Williams. Compare the image at the start of the report taken when we started with that below from the middle part of the day when the gusts were at their strongest. All of the photo’s from the day are held on our Flikr acount here.
