Contessa 26 National Championships 21-23 September 2012 at Lymington Town Sailing Club.
Lymington Town Sailing Club hosted an excellent long weekend of Contessa racing between 21 and 23 September when the 26 class joined the 32 class for a joint event. The fleet were joined for the rally section by Jeremy and Fiona with their new acquisition Grayling, (sail number 105 and hull number 6) who donated a beautiful silver wine coaster and bottle of fine wine as the overall prize.
The fleets benefited from some very good race officering under PRO Tim Willis and his committee boat team from LTSC. The weather varied from a light forecast of up to 6 kts breeze on Friday, followed by a glorious day with perfect sailing conditions of 10 – 14 kts and sun all day on Saturday, to serious rain on Sunday and 25 kts +(rising through the day) and Tim and team did well to get a full racing programme in bearing in mind these conditions.
There was a busy active social programme and competitors were able to enjoy a reception on Friday evening at Jeremy Rogers Ltd with the generous provision of lots of drinks and nibbles, followed by supper in the club, and then on Saturday the class was hosted at one of the CO 32 famous pontoon parties (lots more drinks and chats) and this was followed by a joint championship dinner.
On the racing front close racing was enjoyed within the fleet. At the front honours were shared in the top 3 positions between the strongly sailed Rooie Raker (Nick Morgan / Oliver Pettifer) and the consistent Growler (Charlie Roberts) and also Jiminy Cricket (Mike and Barbara Harrison). There were some close finishes between them for example just 3 secs separated Growler and Rooie Raker in one of the races and 17 secs between the first 2 boats in another race). Going into the final race any one of these 3 could have taken the event and in a strong building wind, Jiminy Cricket just finished closely in front of Rooie Raker followed by Growler the only boat to set a spinnaker in this race and then Elinor (David Houlton), and this set the overall positions in the same order. These were followed by Red Dragon (Ben Pugh) and Me-Mo (Mike and Diana Lyndsey). The non spinnaker division was won by Christine Davis (just back from 5 weeks single handed cruising to the west country) in Black Pearl.
Individual race results appear here on the link to LTSC site.
All in all it was a great weekend of close CO 26 racing and social fellowship. Amongst the competitors hope and keenness was expressed that popularity for this type of event will grow in the future.
Mike Harrison