Bassenthwaite Winter Regatta

Congratulations Felicity.  Not a clean sweep by any means but sufficiently dominant to add the Northern Winter Regatta Crown to the Southern one she won at Weymouth a few weeks ago.

Best Scottish Topper was Andrew McGowan in an impressive fifth place showing the benefits of a long winter of hard work travelling the hard miles to GBR squad, to Cumbrae and training locally too.

Well done Andrew. We look forward to seeing your name becoming a regular on the ITCA results board.

The Bassenthwaite team did a fantastic job all weekend.  Despite very testing conditions and a difficult first start involving two mid sequence postponements and two general recalls the race finally got away under the first of many black flags. (ask Emily and Joanne!)

Races 1 to three were sailed in a mix of light winds with occasional squalls providing an interesting game of snakes and ladders for the 86 Toppers who had begun the day in spring sunshine but soon experienced the bitter chill of the Lake District in March.

Sunday brought a brisk force 4 which all but disappeared for the start of racing but soon returned making for some exciting downwind legs with many a "death roll" to hold the attention of the binocular equipped twitchers (concerned parents) on the splendid Bassenthwaite SC viewing deck.

Race six was a particularly breezy affair which brought quite a few early retrials allowing hot showers for the sailors and a chance of a record quick pack up and early get away for the waiting shore crew.

A short delay and the prize giving completed by 4pm rounded of a near perfect first ITCA Northern Winter regatta.  Well done Felicity Foulds, well done Bassenthwaite SC, well done the Scottish Toppers.

Full results here.    

Or for a professional write up see Yachts and Yachting.