Page 31 - Salcombe Masthead 2020

‘Struggle Trophy’, is presented by Barney to the competitor who succeeds in finishing every race and scores the highest number of points in the process. The list of past winners on the back reads like a Who’s Who of the Solo class. Jonty White ruled himself out of contention with a DNC in the Saturday race, so this year’s epic struggle at the back was fought out between Jonathan Reynolds & Tristram Squire, from which Tris emerged triumphant.
We managed one training event during the season and our thanks go to David Greening & Graham Cranford-Smith who, with the help of Andrew Bourne and his launch, laid on a well-attended day on
19th March. The course included a tour of the estuary and it’s tidal ‘gates’, a session on rig tuning and a series of short races concentrating on the importance of starting technique.
With summer now in full swing, the class racing turned to handicap and the Bucket & Spade Series which was won by David Greening with Simon Dobson 2nd. In all,
7 Solos finished in the top ten. This is a popular series and this year attracted 53
THIS EVENT HAS BECOME ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CALENDAR AND THIS YEAR THE WEATHER DID NOT DISAPPOINT...
different entrants. For some years now David Greening has elected to act as race officer for the day during the August Bank Holiday week-end and run two races, back to back, out at sea in the range. This event has become one of the highlights of the calendar and this year the weather did not disappoint, with plenty of sun and wind. Tim Law switched fleets to his Laser and pretty well cleaned up on the day, but there were some good performances by the Solos, notably Roger Lumby’s fine charge in the last race to take 4th place as the leading Solo, less than two minutes behind his former Laser rival.
Still on the subject of handicap racing, the two Midweek Series were both won by Simon Ballantine in his Aero, followed by the Solos of Peter Sturgess in both series
& Jonathan Reynolds in series 1 and Chris Spencer-Chapman 3rd in series 2. It was good to see that 40% of the entries were made up of Solos.
As the leaves started to turn autumnal, 23 Solos took part in the Autumn Series. There was close racing at the top with individual wins by Simon (Yotter) Yates, David Greening, Simon Dobson, Ed Stephens and Billy Jago, with the Series eventually being settled in that order. There were also some fine performances from Mike Hodges, Roger Guess & Julian Meek, but lack of sufficient attendance pushed them down the results table.
The autumn open meeting only attracted 3 visitors out of 25 entrants, but the standard was high. Saturday’s westerly provided some good racing until it died
Fleet Reports 29