Peter Gray, Adam Smith, Sunday, 24 February 2013
In light winds, 9 of our kids competed in this big regatta at Mornington over the weekend and achieved some fantastic results.
We arrived on Saturday morning to a fresh north-easterly causing excitement especially amongst some of the bigger competitors: James and Alex in their Lasers and Alistair sailing in the open Optis.But that was not to be - the wind abated to flukey lights airs, and direction shifts of 40 to 60 degrees also posed a few challenges. The Australian Int Optimist Team of the top 25 national Opti sailors had assembled for training at Mornington (ahead of next Xmas' national titles at MYC) mid week and were set to dominate the open division, setting the stage for a tough regatta.
In spite of the tough conditions and competition, our junior sailors did very well. In the Open Opti fleet of 47 Alistair Gray finished a creditable 36th.
The Opti Green fleet saw some outstanding results from our novice sailors. In a fleet of 30, Millie Harvey sailed a consisten series to finish 17th including a 7th in the penultimate race. Lucy and Jeremy Gray both had slow start with second half of the fleet finishes in the first two races, but after that they hit their straps with Lucy finishing 9th overall (including a 3rd place in the last race) and Jeremy a fantastic 7th (going one better than his sister in the last race to take 2nd place - brilliant!). On Sunday we had an additional 3 competitors in this division with Nicholas Jurovic achieving a best result of 12th in one race, Will Fleming getting a 3rd place and Willem Dugay-Grist racking up two 5th place and a 3rd place. Race 7 in particular saw a spectacular result for WYC with our kids filling half of the top 12 places!
Interesting to note the WYC pedigree in this division with former members' children Imogen and Lachie Weber finishing 2nd and 12th respectively and Harriet Cooper (sailing only on Saturday) achieving a 5th and a 4th place.
In the Lasers, James Fleming had a good first up regatta in his Laser 4.7 finishing in 4th place. Alexander Jurovic struggled with light winds on Saturday in his Laser 4.7 s decided to step up to the bigger Radial rig on Sunday and then proceed ed to win the first heat and finished 2nd in the last two races of the series.
Full results can be found here
Last Modified on 28/02/2013 05:28