RS100 Rooster Virtual Sprints 2020

RS100 Europeans day 2 at the RS Games © Alex & David Irwin / www.sportography.tv

Once again, the RS100 Class Association has knocked it out the park! Six upwind/downwind races in ideal conditions in exotic locations such as Sydney Harbour, San Francisco and of course, Portsmouth.

Some of the usual faces were absent, notably Clive Eplett (who would prefer there to be real water involved) and Giles Peckham who forced his wife to cycle round the Isle of Wight rather than do the gentlemanly thing and let her race in his place (as Mostyn Evans did). Dave Smart made a guest appearance on Zoom but did not race, presumably because he was not allowed to race in his own boat with the wavy blue line down the side.

Fortunately, there were a few willing participants from the RS Vareo fleet, so we were joined by Paul North, who organised the Zoom session, and Mike Dicker.

Cindy Donnecke-Herz brought her RS100 from Germany to make this a truly international event and put plenty of us to shame including one of the usual front runners, Greg Booth. Greg seem constantly distracted by sheep, leaving his helming position and disappearing from view. This was a shame because despite his poor performance he still reached the fastest speed overall, albeit in the wrong direction.

Greg also won the award for most swearing, although that did not translate into penalties. Huw Powell appeared to be on the top of his game in terms of penalties, particularly when it counted and he was up at the front. Nevertheless, even Huw could not beat Paul North for the greatest number of penalties but these mostly occurred before the start and did not affect his performance overall.

The battle really turned out to be between Ethan Dawson, Mark Cockrill and Paul North with Ethan scoring two firsts, three seconds and a third to win the event overall. Mark Cockrill had put his time in isolation to good use to come second overall and will be content to know that his appalling result in the second race would not have made a difference. We can now see why Paul North was so keen to set up the Zoom link, as (despite his self-deprecating comments) he had clearly also been practising and came in third, four points ahead of Mark Harrison.

Mark Harrison improved throughout the racing, winning the fourth race and constantly vying with the front runners in the last race, eventually coming third in that race to come fourth overall. No doubt wearing a buoyancy aid and sailing cap enabled him to achieve this magnificent feat.

One person unusually missing from the podium was Al Dickson who kindly set up the event and ran it. It appears that Al entered race five but failed to start, despite actually being in charge of the start sequence - pretty impressive!

The back of the fleet had its own tight racing with Cindy, Greg and Pippa all vying for last place. It was close, with them all (at one time or another) driving their boats through each other, incurring penalties, or generally going the wrong way. Eventually Pippa achieved the cachet of last-place, presumably due to the interference by Mostyn who won the award for best (or worst) backseat driver.

Thank you to Rooster for sponsoring this virtual event in place of our real sailing Sprint Championship. The winner wins a 10 litre signal blue dry bag emblazoned with the special Rooster RS National Tour logo. The next event will be hosted as soon as safely possible.

Check out the RS100 website to keep up to date and follow the RS Class Association on Facebook.