Porthpean Sailing Club
 

Tasar South West Champioships
May 2nd 3rd 2009

It’s always a risk arranging any event over a Bank Holiday weekend but this year the weather Gods came up trumps and we had perfect conditions for 2 days of hard racing in moderate breezes, to complete a scheduled 5 race series.
Porthpean was looking at its best as it basked in the sun and certainly drew admiring comments from many of the visitors, who had come from Scotland, Lymington & Bristol, Paignton, Plymouth & Wimbleball.
The races and courses were expertly run by our very experienced Race Officer, Ron Barrett and his team. The wind on Saturday was from the south and produced some excellent planning on the small but telling swell. All races were sailed on the inverted “P” course which suits a Tasar so well and gives the added bonus of turning races round very quickly. We sailed well out from our normal Club racing area, so there was no real local knowledge to be used, and the wind strength was of the force 3 limit, which gave good planning reaches but no real capsize drama. The Championship was dominated by last year’s winners, Pete Ellis & Charlotte Birbeck (Torpoint Mosquito SC), winning 4 out of the 5 races. They were pushed quite hard at times by Nathan Batchelor & Pamela Williams (Clevedon SC) and Stacey Bray & Adam Eastham. These 3 crews finishing 1st, 2nd and 3rd in both races on Saturday. A BBQ, sitting in the evening sun was held after the racing and the evening was completed by the excellent live band “High Tide”, rocking the Clubhouse to its foundations.
Light rain in the night had disappeared by Sunday morning and we were greeted by a brisk North Westerly breeze in brilliant sunshine. Some extra competitors arrived for the Sunday racing, including the current National Champions, Malcolm and Fiona Davies from Paignton and Tim & Myumi Knight from Lymington. The Davies coming 2nd in races 3 and 5, winning race 4, and the Knights placed 3rd in races 3 & 4. Once again conditions showed the Tasar at its best, with the boats planning with spray flying down the reaches. Each of the 5 races lasting round about an hour each, resulting in many weary crews by the finish on Sunday.
Allan Orton took some superb photographs on Saturday. There is a superb sequence of Simon Pryce and Brian Phillips, where Simon fell out of the boat and was helped back in by Brian. Remarkably the boat kept sailing whilst their tussle went on. At the moment they are all loaded on the Club Computer. The file size is some 1.8GB which makes it rather too big to upload to the website, but I will try and put up a good selection of Club Boats in the next few weeks.
The pictures taken below were mainly of the social on Saturday evening. The pictures of Tasars rigging on the beach were taken ny Stewart page.