Hampton Court Model Yacht Club, run this charity event every year. It kicks the year off with some nice competition although we missed the likes of Peter and Oliver Stollery and Darin Ballington who were regular visitors in the past, due in part to the bad weather.
Boats were prepared in the club house sheltering from the rain and after a wet briefing from our PRO we set forth to race. The forecast was 12 gusting mid 20's so the supposed wise heads put up their B rigs.
Some even wiser heads new better and put up the big rigs.
The fleet was split into two and B rigs dominated the first seeding race with The K2 of Martin Wilson splitting the B rigs of Nigel Barrow and Craig Richards, both of whom were debuting brand new Craig Richards designs.
In the second, Steve Cockerill showed the fleet a clean pair of heals with his A rig. No nose diving.
After much deliberation and expectation of the wind building the B riggers elected to persist. Steve Cockerill again won his heat but sadly suffered the misfortune of a broken jib boom and not being able to source a spare, persisted with a B rig for the day in A rig conditions.
After race 2 the RO announced that sailing would continue as a single fleet so the battle began for podium places. After 5 races at lunch the scores were:
Craig Richards 8 Nemesis
David Lindsay 8 Proteus
Nigel Barrow 9 Proteus
Each sharing a win or two with Nemesis and Proteus, Craig's new designs.
Proteus is an enhancement of Craig's original Chimera design, which showed great promise at last year's Nationals as I recall.
Nemesis (I wonder who's that would be?) is an experimental lighter weather design being much narrower on the waterline.
It looks as if finally, the line has been crossed where 3D printed boats can be as competitive as epoxy glass.
its possible now to build a 3D printed boat with a layer of glass and have to add nearly 300gms of correctors! They are as stiff or stiffer than epoxy glass and as light in the ends. Using Polymax PLA filament they are more robust, with the ability to survive significant impacts.
In the afternoon, the heavily port bias start line proved challenging as did the occasional clump of weed ....the two new boat designs prevailing followed by
Jim La Roche and David Lapes, finishing an impressive 5th with his very competitive home built Alioth.
The Emsworth team packed the next few places and at least one of them will be booking an appointment at Specsavers as he kept turning early at the right-hand leeward gate. Oops.
With the prevailing wind direction straight down Rick Pond great racing was had all day.
Results
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Nigel Barrow for sending the copy for write up.