Itchenor has sailing success stories
Setting Sail
Itchenor Sailing Club’s busy summer season continues apace,
The club hosted the European Championships for the International 12SQM Sharpie class. Forty of the beautiful classic dinghies came to Itchenor from across the UK, Holland, Germany and Portugal.
This class competed in the 1952 Olympics and the design has hardly changed since.
Principal race officer Peter Taylor and his team provided first-class racing in mostly champagne conditions in Hayling Bay and event director Roddy Bridge ensured the event was a success.
Being a family friendly class with a reputation for partying, they needed little encouragement to enjoy themselves.
On the water the result went down to the last race with Chris and Tim Gibbs in GB125 Windspeil just beating Daan Versteeg and Arnold Mulderij in NED14 Jan van Galen into second place.
Elsewhere, other successes have come thick and fast.
George and Richard Bullock just missed the podium in the Mirror National Championships at Poole Yacht Club, beaten only by boats helmed by adults. Our Int 14 sailors again dominated the Prince of Wales Cup Week at Falmouth with Neil Jones and Ed Fitzgerald taking the prize.
But the greatest accolade goes to Paul Ward and his team for winning the Darwin Escapes 2019 J/70 World Championships.
It attracted 77 entries from 20 countries and Ward’s Eat Sleep J Repeat were the first British team to win the event.
He said: “We are very very pleased; it has been hard work and we have a very good team.
“This was a tough week but a lot of fun. We were just a few metres from the finish when we realised we had probably won, we worked hard to the end, the Americans and the Spanish pushed us hard.”
Great regular class racing for 12 classes of boat continues every weekend at Itchenor.
We recently hosted the Haines Challenge Cup, a prestigious trophy first awarded by the Haines family in 1930, so one of the club’s oldest trophies.
It is been a pursuit race for boats of 12ft or over and this year was won by Mike Moss and David Mcgregor sailing X50 Xcitation. And our rowers recently took our two Galleon fours to the Great River Race, a 21.6-mile London River Rowing Marathon.
The picture above was taken as Itchenor joined 257 other venues in 31 countries in Bart’s Bash. Billed as the largest sailing event in the world, it’s held in memory of Olympic gold and silver medalist Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson, who died in a sailing accident. His memory lives on in the Andrew Simpson Foundation.
Three Keelboat fleets and the International 14s raced, while racing in smaller dinghies was run for children.