After an overcast start, the sun shone and the wind blew to provide a great day’s racing on Sunday at Horning Sailing Club. With a north easterly breeze, this meant a running start and a beat back to the Clubhouse. Despite plenty of wind on the first stretch to the corner, further up the course the winds were extremely light, necessitating a change of course to keep in the best conditions.
There were particularly strong turnouts in the Rebel and Yeoman fleets, which also both saw close competition. First away were the Rebels, with five taking part. Given the morning’s breeze, the fleet started with two reefs, but soon shook these out later in the day as the predicted winds did not materialise. The winner of the first race was Kim West sailing Rebel, in what was to be his first of three wins of the day. Behind him in second was Peter Brown sailing Rebel Rothay for the first two races, with Amanda Barnes (Rebel Jade) taking a second in the third race. During the second race, several of the fleet returned from around the corner sporting green flags - indicating they were taking a penalty, leaving it rather to the imagination as to what might have happened when out of sight!
The Yeomans also saw five boats competing. In the first race, Toby Fields (Tanskey) went from fourth to first position, with Geoff Stubbs (Tara) second. The second race saw another win for Tanskey, with Roger Pettit (Anoah) second. The afternoon race saw a win for Tara.
Ron Jackson in Holly Blue, Alastair Fields in Rosy Wave and Kevin Saunders in Silver Cloud took a win each in the Yare & Bures, whilst Rosy Wave won the afternoon’s Mixed One Design class race.
The dinghies saw Lasers, Splashes and Toppers compete, with the first race seeing an extremely close finish between the Lasers of James Street, Harrison Ryder and Tallulah Burr, with James taking the win. First Topper was Anya Gittins, with Charlie Gould second. The second race saw these results repeated. The afternoon’s Allcomers B fleet saw the win go to Jasper Copping in a Norfolk Dinghy, with Charlie first Topper. By the final race, just two Lasers battled it out – with two seconds separating the finishers, the win going to Tallulah ahead of James.
All in all, it was a good day’s racing in great Spring conditions. Next Sunday sees racing return to Hoveton Little Broad, before the Yachtmaster Three Rivers Race 2023 takes place the following weekend – Sat 3rd/Sun 4th June.
