Medway Dinghy Regatta 2018

Medway Regatta 2018 © Nick Champion / www.championmarinephotography.co.uk

Medway Regatta 2018 © Nick Champion / www.championmarinephotography.co.uk

A great weekend event primarily about sailing but the backup services were all in place and well organised - it must have taken a huge number of volunteers to make this the successful event it was.

Put next year's event in your diary - 6th and 7th July 2019. Boats from as far away as Southampton arrived, from Friday evening onwards, to savour the delight of the estuary racing downstream of the Medway Towns. It's complex sailing with strong tides, mud banks and the navigation marks as racing marks. The weather was good so apart from a few commercial vessels there were many leisure craft out and about – some of whom knew what they were doing. We even had hovercraft!

But the real challenge is beating the opposition in such a complex environment. Anybody – regardless of their skill at sailing who ventures out needs admiration. My personal admiration goes to a little girl somewhere in the age range of 8 to 10 who took her RS Tera Sport (probably the slowest boat out) out on the Medway and won the Junior Fleet trophy. She sails at Wilsonian and she makes me so proud, her name Charlotte White.

There were 64 boats in all divided into fleets; Fast, Medium, Slow, Junior, Wayfarer and 2000. The Medium Fleet was as always the most numerous with sixteen entries, eight of which were Blazes. Boats came from several east coast clubs; Broxbourne, Seaford and Calshot. Steven Worf comes every year with his Kestrel from Calshot and every year he does well – this year second in the Medium Fleet beaten only by Andy McIvor in his Blaze.

Medway Regatta 2018 - photo © Nick Champion / www.championmarinephotography.co.uk

The 2000s had 10 entries and was convincingly won by Richard and Ian Hudson from Bough Beech with 3 firsts. They were convincing winners last year I remember. The Fast fleet was won by one of our own, Chris Ashby and Ian Parris in an Alto. So too one of our own won the Wayfarer Fleet, Brian Lamb and Sam Pygall. I make no apologies for mentioning Charlotte White again as the winner of the Juniors in a fleet of seven.

The Slow Fleet had eleven competitors and Martin Jessop also from WSC, won again as he did last year. The racing started and finished on the club line with a strong incoming tide. Courses took us down to the vicinity of the now defunct Kingsnorth power station. There was lots of thin green weed and I think this had grown on the mud-banks during this hot weather and had been lifted off by the tide. It was weak and fell apart rather than choke up the foils. Yes, the weather was hot and the prevailing wind weak so the morning races were a challenge against the tide and the Sunday morning race had to be abandoned soon after it started. By the afternoons the wind had built to healthy, fully powered conditions.

What could be better than ripping along in hot summer sunshine? What could be better than such a well organised, two days of racing?

Overall Results: