Otter Carnival Cup 2016 30 Sep 2016

With many Otters busy entertaining the crowds in a variety of displays at the Burnham Carnival and others away at the RYA’s Eastern Event at Grafham Water, the format for the day was expected to be an intimate affair – until 36 Otters, across the full range of fleets, turned up! They all listened intently to Marc Ellis’s briefing (although no-one mentioned he’d missed out the leeward turning mark!) 

The weather was glorious, a wonderfully warm force 3 to 4 from the South.  The starts were all off the end of the pontoon, with the first windward leg across the river, followed by some great reaches and runs.  Racing was close across the fleets. ‘Those that do’ seemed to eat all the cake the Club could offer, and talk of the imminent new purchase of a Topper Sport for Otter parents to learn to sail was spreading across the balcony with excitement.

Phil led the pond sailors out amongst the racers (well why not?) on the course for their last sail of the season, followed by some swimming afterwards topped off with a mud crawl on knees and elbows to finish….who won?  No-one actually cared it seemed on this occasion!!!! ………..Happy days!

Back with more “serious” stuff, racing continued on the water much to the delight of the cake eaters on the balcony, although one or two of the munching spectators were not entirely clear on how many laps (or indeed races) were actually being sailed – well they clearly hadn’t listened to the briefing!!!

With racing and mud crawling completed there followed a mad dash to recover the ribs and de-rig before everyone got down to the very important business of heading off to the Carnival Fair to try out all the stomach churning rides and eat mountains of candy floss.  Such was the excitement that pretty much everyone forgot about the actual racing results – except for Paul Drew – who diligently took the race sheets off home to work out who had in fact won – well done Paul!

So with a fanfare and a drum roll (well it is the Carnival Cup after all), the winners are:

Optimist Fleet

1^st Angus Beale, 2^nd Ethan Hague, 3^rd Nathan Flynn

Slow Handicap

1^st, Lizzie Rands (Topper), 2^nd Milly Drew (Tera), 3^rd James Ball (Topper)

Fast Handicap

1^st Luke Beuvink (Laser Radial), 2^nd Christie Peel (Laser 4.7), 3^rd James Pitcher & Rory Kemp (Feva)

Well done to all those who took part!

14 year old Topper sailor Lizzie Rands wrote of the day:

The day began with an interesting briefing from Mark Ellis who was the Race Officer for the regatta. The Handicap fleet started the racing believing they knew exactly where they were going – or so they thought! Arriving at Fairway 9 instead of Fairway 7 they realised their mistake and then continued racing on the correct course. We all found it hilarious when the starting line that was between the end of the pontoon and one of the moored squibs was moved when the owner of the squib decided to take his boat out for a joy ride! But moving on – most importantly the racing was amazing and so were all the parents who helped out to make it happen.