Nationals Report

Wast Lothian Yacht Club were a fantastic host for the 2011 Topper National Championships.  Despite very challenging weather conditions a championship series was held with four races in the qualifying series then four races in the resulting Bronze, Silver and Gold Fleets.  Day 1-5 were held in very challenging light conditions with various interruptions for torrential rain or sea harr reducing visbility below safe levels but the competitiors sprits sayed high.

Friday dawned with sunshine and a good 15 mph Westerley with occassional 20-25 mph gusts and the resulting champagne sailing conditions did at least give the competitiors a taste of East Lothian at its awsome best.

Overall Winner was Gyles Kuzak of Parkstone Yacht Club slipping in front of a very consistent Matt Vennables from Sutton during that last day.  Laura Gilmore from Strangford Lough who had led with a string of first places in the lighter winds could not sustain the challenge in the breeze and finished first female in 6th overall.  Curtis Mearns also enjoyed the breeze to take third overall.

Top Scott was Jack Aitken (JDP) in 32nd overall.  With only four races held in very light breezes the gold fleet was packed out with current Topper 4.2 National squad sailors enjoying the chance to excel with the extra size of the 5.3 sail.  With only one discard there was little room for black flags or errors and several of our top sailors were dissapointed not to make the gold fleet cut in what was to proove a very mixed up set of early results.

Current 4.2 Scottish Star Lewis Marr did make Gold fleet and hung on in the breeze to finish 70th in GOLD and second Scottish sailor overall whilst National Squad Sailors Joanna Barrie (NJS) and Aaron Murray (NIJS) just missed Gold and were 6th and 8th in Silver respectively.

Perhaps the most dissapointed of all was Joanne Foster (NIJS) who might have been a good bet for a top 20 in a breezy event but was lying in the 220's after day one and could not avoid the cut for Bronze fleet!  Fortunately some running repairs solved the problem and she was able to conclude with a 1,3,3,1 scoreline, the only competitor in any fleet to "medal" in every race of the championship series and recovered from 39th to 3rd overall in Bronze.

There are day by day reports on Yachts and Yachting.  The full results and some event pictures are best viewed on the event mini site at http://www.sailracer.us/eventsites/default_eventmode.asp?eventid=63171

The results are currently mixed by fleet so there are three first places then three seconds etc.  These are the gold, silver and bronze fleet positions.

Next up is the Sovereign Ski Topper World Championships in Ireland starting on 15th August 2011.  Lets hope for a more favourable week of weather in Dublin Bay.  Click here for the Worlds Minisite.