2023-2024 IOMMDWCS R3 Bournville RS&MBC Results.

Yesterday Bournville RS&MBC hosted the final round of this winters Midland District IOM series, initially there were 21 entries booked in but we actually started with 18. When we arrived the weather was overcast and there was a light rain in the air, however there was a gentle wind down most of the length of the lake, and so a few were already having a quick practice.

Bill Green (PRO) called everyone into the club house for the initial briefing at 10:00am saying that he would be running the event as two heats as the start line was to be down the far end of the lake. The resulting course was a beat, offset mark, run and beat back to the top end of the lake where the fleet board was situated. Bill stated that with the co-operation of the skippers he would try to get sufficient heats away that everyone would get two discards, in effect this meant a minimum of 16 starts.

Because of the length of the course and the racing being close actually allowed Bill and the team to complete 20 starts giving each skipper in effect 10 races, or for the lucky ones a lot more than that as they jumped between the fleets. Thanks to the skippers for taking their penalties on the water and the level of the rule observance.

Mark Dicks and Bill G were acting as the start line judges and observers, whilst Peter Court and Graham Robinson were on finish line duty whilst I was managing the heat board and computer scoring.

Racing continued at a steady pace with the weather having improved by 11:00am bringing a slight increase in wind strength with it, but not enough to consider anything other than a top suit. It did however bring the usual Bournville challenge in so much as the wind direction was variable. Bill called an end to the mornings proceedings at around 12:40 having completed 5 complete races. The skippers gathered in the club house for tea & coffee and a large selection of sandwiches which was part of the race entry fee, and the odd bit of cake for those lucky enough to get in early. The break was only 30 minutes and Bill had everyone back on the water promptly with the next race away on time.

Below is a short sequence of pictures taken of an ‘A’ fleet start over a period of 41 seconds just before and after the start gun.

Hopefully from these pictures you will see how close each race was.

Things were tight among the top 4 skippers with Darin sailing a Pikanto in place of his usual Britpop, however a couple of low placed finishes around lunchtime dropped him away from the leaders. This left it to Dorian Crease, John Burgoine & Rob Wilson to see who would take the spoils on the day. By race 8 as I was doing the scores I had a good idea just how close it was, Rob W had a 10th in race 8 and both John B & Dorian C were both getting a couple of mid pack scores with 5th’s. This allowed Graham Whalley to take race 8 and Simon Richardson with his Alioth to take a well deserved win in race 9, and Rob W to get back to winning ways by taking the final race of the day race 10. The fact that the race team managed to get 10 completed races done by 15:40 was a credit to all.

The prize presentation was held in the club house, with the top spot doing to John Burgoine on a total after discards of 15 points, and second place going to Dorian Crease also with 15 points. Both of them had 3 race wins each and so it went to count back which HMS split in favour of John. Third place went to Rob Wilson, and fourth to Darin Ballington. A full set of results are here: 2024 MDIOMWS R3

I would like to thank the Bournville team as mentioned above along with Stephen Hodgkinson for their hosting of the event.

Peter Moore came down in the morning and took the pictures below which he shared with me to include in this report, thank you Peter.

Bill Green presenting the prizes to the event winners, and a few more pictures by Gordon