Roadford Rocket at Roadford Lake Sailing Club

Just under 60 boats took the water for the inaugural Roadford rocket held at Roadford Lake reservoir near Launceston in South Devon. The day dawned as forecast with a brisk south-westerly and heavy drizzle, but with a forecast of the wind moving West then North West, the race committee opted for a committee boat start to guarantee a windward first leg and the event started 10 minutes late. The boats were divided into four flights with asymmetrics going first, then double-handers, lasers and remaining single-handers.

Clear starts were made by all and early GPS tracking by SailRacer showed that the Osprey and RS400 were already showing well. Further back there was a good battle amongst the Lasers with several local boats having a tough dogfight and amongst the single-handers, the early leaders were the Phantom, Blaze and RS Aero.

The course was quite complicated to allow for the across-lake wind, but fortunately nobody got lost, but with a combination of beats/runs/beam reaches there was plenty of opportunity for fast sailing and overtaking. At around the 90 minute mark, the sun came out and the wind started to fade and track further to the north, so boats on the last lap finished in a rather dying wind but pleasant conditions!

The Osprey of Terry Curtis and Peter Greig from Mounts Bay showed the best speed on a GPS tracking and took the winner's position, closely followed by the Hornet of Richard Garry and Sam Woolner of Starcross. Richard Cain and Steve Cockerill in RS400 and Rooster 4000 took the next two positions, then a little further down, there was a strong group of single handers led by Alex Hutchings from Roadford who sailed the last two laps extremely fast to win the lasers by a handsome margin, then the two Supernovas of Norman Halstead and Ian Porlock.

There were 12 juniors taking part, with Ben Hawkes from Wimbleball first in Laser Radial , Ellie Hutchings from Roadford second, followed by Harry Kennedy Stokes Bay in next place.

Most competitors completed the full course; commiserations to Mark Harold who unfortunately took a nasty knock just before the start and retired.

Many thanks to Sail Racer for their support in getting this event organised, with their excellent website and GPS live tracking, North sails and Volvo sailing for help with the prizes, and Roadford Lake Watersports Centre for organising the rescue facilities and trailer catering and BBQ. The race team of Alistair Wallace and Phil Murray got the starts and finish timings just right and thanks to the recorder teams, and other club members who helped on shore.

The Club must apologise for the delay and mix-up with the initial results and hopes that this did not detract too much from an excellent day's sailing.

Photographs, courtesy of SailRacer, are available on Google+.

The South West challenge series moves next Sunday to Starcross and hopefully many of the competitors will enjoy another good battle in a quite different venue.

Thanks to the excellent turnout, just over £200 has been raised for Sailability and will be presented to the Wimbleball group at the Beastie.

Overall Results: