2023 M&S District Marblehead Championship – GAMES 2 Results

02/03/2023
Met & Southern District, Marblehead, Racing Reports

2023 M&S District Marblehead Championship – GAMES 2

Three Rivers RYC hosted the 2023 M&S Marblehead Championship at the Aquadrome, Rickmansworth on 26 February. The Three Rivers race team created a very good day’s racing in almost ideal sunny weather conditions. The north-easterly wind generally blowing straight down Bury Lake, but with big variations in both strength and direction.

A good entry for this class of 19 boats enjoyed 8 races sailed in 2 heats with RO John Male setting a simple windward leeward course, with a windward spreader mark and a leeward gate. ‘A’ rigs were the order of the day with only a few wipeouts & rudders showing in the strongest gusts on the fast downwind legs. After a couple of general recalls the starting line was reset to spread the entries along the line and both Darin Ballington sailing a GRUNGE & Phil Holliday sailing an F6 got off to a good start by winning their seeding heats. In Race 2 Tony Guerrier sailing a GRUNGE beat Darin into 2nd place, with Paul Tickner, also sailing a GRUNGE in 3rd. Rob Vice sailing his UP took Race 3 from Phil with David Adam sailing a GRUNGE 3rd. Darin came back to win Race 4 from Roger Stollery sailing his UP with Paul 3rd.

Darin was top of the lunchtime leaderboard with 4 points followed by Tony with 7 and Paul with 8.

Rob came back in Race 5 to win from Tony & his brother Austin both sailing a GRUNGE. Their places were reversed in Race 6, but they were both beaten by Darin. In the next race Austin came to the front to win from Nigel Barrow sailing a STARKERS with Darin 3rd. In the final race Tony scored again from Rob & Darin.

At the prize giving Darin thanked RO John and his team for running a really good event and encouraged competitors to come to the Marblehead Ranking weekend at his club, Lincoln, at the end of March.