Burghfield! Beers! Blunders! Boats!

So, another championship weekend has passed, 20 odd boats (i think) came down Reading way for the Thames Valley Area Champs... as always, well in keeping with 2 years ago when me and James were last there, the event was excellently run, both on and off the water... as to the sailing, I don't know why I bother tryin' to do these reports, I can never bleedin' remmeber what happens, probably need to employ some journalist type to do it for us.. anyone know any student journalists who would report on the events for Soulsailor for bugger-all cash and some beers??

Anyway, here goes from what I can remember.... the weekend was blessed with not too shifty winds, not too much rain and a pretty fair set of results.. the breeze ranged from v.light to a good force 4 and I think pretty much everyone enjoyed the weekend...

Oh yeh BTW, Burghfield put on a nice little show in the morning...2 Red-Bull rep girls pulled up in their Red-Bull beetle and plied us all with free cans of red-bull, nice touch guys...like it...

These are the views of Ant, not wholly accurate, and definately not impartial...sorry!

Race 1
Well, this race didn't happen, don't know why, boats launched, did some sailing, we tested our bouyancy out (boats fine) and they randomly allocated positions for the race - we got given a 14th...

Race 2
Dunno whether it was the dunking or whatever, but I really cant remember what happened on this one, sorry guys, I know me and James ended up about 7th, but honestly thats all I can remember....

Apres-Yachting
So, tents up, beers drunk, the best chilli i've had in a long time (cheers Chef-Ant), lots of chat, larfs, beers spilt...all in James's lap (photos tomorrow), James wearing Youngy's jeans (makes a change from womens tops!), not a really late night, woke up with bloody great bruises on my upper arm and James had a knackered elbow... hmm maybe it wasn't as layed-back relaxed as I remembered???

Race 3
Again, breeze was up and down, by now the key players were Johnny, Anne and Nick (seperate boats), us and Phil Kirk I think. We managed to improve again on this one, with a 5th and now it was down to Johhny and Anne to fight out over the winners trophy..

Race 4
More of the Same, Johhny led most the way round I think, us in 2nd, feeling slightly happier with ourselves... bummer that Anne got us on the last piggin seconds of the race.. not happy but 3rd is OK!

Race 5
So, Johnny had it in the bag by now, Anne was safe in 2nd, but 3rd was open to I think, Nick Jackson, ourselves and Phil Kirk... we had a pretty good start and by the windward mark were looking good, Phil Kirk was well behind us in this one (for a change) and Nick was......in the bloody lead... ahhh. So, the rest of the race was spent, overtaking a few boats and trying to drag the lead from Nick... think we had to probably beat him by 2 or 3 places to get 3rd overall, well, the race was a slight procession, not many overtaking lanes and although we valiantly got closer to him, we never managed to get into a tight battle or stand a chance of knocking him out of 3rd place overall...oh well..

So, we managed to improve each race, which is a start, especially as this was our last yacht before the Nationals in Abersoch ..

Final results were:

1st Johhny and Alex
2nd Anne and Allan
3rd Nick and (sorry who were you?)
4th Ant and James
5th Phil and (2 different crews)