Hollingworth Lake Sailing Club

Photo: Martin Watts

Hollingworth Lake Sailing Club

There was plenty of sailing activity over the weekend (2 & 3 April) as the daylight increases and warmer weather comes with sunshine. Despite this there was a cold blustery wind to contend with.

On Saturday, six Laser sailors had a training day with Ali Young, a three times Olympic Laser sailor. She put the squad through their paces, on and off the water. The lake was mirror-like at first, but the wind filled in from the north east to give quite lively conditions and all, except young Daisy Fisher, capsized at least once. Daisy put into practice what she had learned when racing on Sunday with a couple of bullets.

Over the weekend, young Jasper Bramwell went to the Topper Class Inland Championship at Grafham Water for his first experience of a major national event. In a fleet of 85 young sailing competitors, he had a fantastic weekend, finishing 11th overall. Indeed the outstanding moment was to win the sixth race, which was excellent.

Martin Brennan was away to Burwain on Sunday for a Solo open event where he finished fifth overall.

Sunday’s club racing was dominated by female sailors, including Daisy Fisher, with several others in colourful Toppers. Mike Smith took the first race win, as Daisy had made an error in the course. Having come ashore and gone into the clubhouse, she created a moment of amusement as her Laser set off down the slipway, on a gust of wind, launched and sailed out of the harbour to be recovered by the safety boat team. Les Bithell launched his new Merlin Rocket with Naz McGuire where ‘teething’ troubles led to a capsize in the second race. This gave the advantage to Stuart Bates and Adam McGovern in their Merlin.

After an eventful day, sailors look forward to Wednesday evening racing again.