After quite a long gap, the Super Saturday dinghy fleet made a welcome return to the River in breezy conditions with a small but enthusiastic fleet and some new faces making their debut in the series.

A somewhat hesitant start to the Fast Handicap fleet saw Nick Milton leading at the first mark, with Ben Hutton-Penman snapping at his heels, but a messy gybe mark and capsize put paid to that brief moment at the front of the fleet….  Elsewhere there was some nip and tuck racing, capsizes, helpful (or not so helpful…) windshifts, and enough wind to squeeze in 5 or 6 laps of the trapezoidal course before our Race Officer, Adam Prior, put us out of our misery.  However, with a capsize on the last lap Ben H-P relinquished first place to Charlie Mathews (due to average lap times), with Charlie Somerset and Mark Wade making their way onto the podium after a clean and tidy race.  A notable mention to Harry and Max in the RS200 for some great saves, as well as a bit of swimming, in what were tricky conditions !

In the slow handicap fleet, Angus Beale, hot off the back of his recent success in the ILCA 4 class at the RYA Eastern Junior Championship, and James Hutton-Penman were duking it out at the front, but Lucie Prior and Florence Fisher weren’t far behind.

The second races kicked off after a band of wind had gone through and in the fast handicap fleet once again Ben made his way to the front of the fleet, closely chased by Nick Milton, Charlie Matthews, and George Somers who was giving Nic Tolhurt’s Blaze a very thorough buoyancy test !  But at the end, Ben H-P held on comfortably from Nick Milton, while once again Charlie and Mark sailed a clean race and stuck it on the podium.

In the slow handicap, once again it was James H-P and Angus leading the charge, but once again Lucie Prior was keeping them in her sights.  Elsewhere in the fleet, Amelia Kilgour was keeping up a great pace in her RS Tera while Callum Clarke and Amy Sheppard seemed to be taking a more relaxed approach to racing with quite a lot of laughter to be heard !

Overall it was a nice return for the Super Saturday fleet and thanks go out to our Race Officer, Adam Prior, and his team, as well as the numerous safety boat crews who were kept busy (and also provided much needed morale support at the gybe mark !). It will be great to see more boats out on Saturday 16th July as part of the club’s 150th Anniversary Regatta weekend.

Nick Milton