Early arrivals at 8.30am. Race officials in conference on the left and warm welcomes to fellow competitors on the right.
toolkits worthy of small engineering workshops appear on the greensward.
preparations become more intense as the starting time approaches. Sails are set and tested.
Is this harking back to the early days of steam and road transport?
No its the
OOD (pronounced Ode) (Officer of the Day) with a marker flag for the end of the
control area (the area in which skippers may control their boat and the official observers call incidents.)
Maurice is one of three local club skippers competing today.
Could have been a fourth if our measuring evening had happened earlier in the season....perhaps next time.
As you can see Maurice is blessed with a perfect nautical name too. Jon and Robin are the names to look for if you are an HDMBC member.
Seeding Race the first race putscompetitors into two fleets A and B. Fleet B always races first in each pair of heats and the first four are promoted to Fleet A and race again in the second heat of each race.
(well that's as much as I can tell you hope its clearer than pond water! Webmaster)
The intense concentration is impressive but I took the photo of the stand
second from the right (I did at first wonder why he had a large mallet in his tool kit) that allows the boat to turn in the wind rather than the usual four legs that allow it to blow over in our very variable coastal breezes.
I just kinda knew some of you would want a closer look at that natty stand.
Winds freshen a little as the racing approaches ...but not yet enough to
change down surely
(CHANGE DOWN: choose one of the two other smaller suits of sail permitted in the International One Metre class you can see the IOM symbol on the sails and "I" in an "O") surely.
Same activity just viewed from the opposite direction.
A sense of the impressive location with great Felixstowe dock cranes in the background.
You can always tell the locals by the sandals.oter competitors come "Michael Chamberlain from Rotherham,
Chaz Jordan from Hampton Court and Vinnie Zammit from Malta." so Henry tells us. You may notice the unusual MLT on Vinnie's sails.
Why is it always so much easier when you do the test rigging the day before?
Ever had that dreadful thought "I'm sure it was in here before I left home."
Doesn't appear to be in that sail box either?
More and more competitors arrive from as far away as Yorkshire.
Locals like Mike who come to be offcial observers are on hand from an early start to give directions to the cafe and the loos.
Close proximity to the back of your car allows for getting all those little parts out without too much walking.
By 9.30am boats are being tested in the water, lifted out, adjusted and retested. Wind is picking up too.
Much tinkering going on..............................
Lots to smile about at this stage of the event.........it hasn't started yet.
Club chairman, Jon, pushing the boat out to get buoys in just the right places.
Last minute instructions are passed to observer officials.
Tension rises as the OOD blows his whistle and calls for attention.
The OOD explains the timings of the day, offers weather forecast and explains his map of the course, port or starboard roundings of bouys and where the start and finish lines are plus the control area.
The legend on the left means start at the start line
buoy 1 to port (pass it on your boats left)
buoy 2 to port
buoy 3 to port
buoy 1 to port
buoy 3 to port (so making a triangle and a sausage)
finish at the finsh line between buoy 3 and 1.
The yellow and red flags mark the boundary of the control area.
At last the main part of the day begins ..the first seeding race...here a few seconds before the start..... counted down from two minutes
the boats begin to jstle for position on the start line.
Almost there now...........must be or 156 and 36 will run out of line.
156 has just cleared the buoy visible between his boom and deck. all have taken the starboard tack
except 97 who has taken the less favoured port course.
Tacking into the wind soon spreads the fleet across the lake on their very varied chosen routes to buoy 1.
At the first mark, buoy 1, 161 who was second from last on the line(9th) is now in fifth place. 36 who shared front place with 156 is now
.
behind 161. 156 is now several lenghts behind 36 (just rounding the buoy in the picture above). 97 seems to have gained little from his port tack start....although i have had some success with this tactic as it avoids the collisions on the on the start line.
Notice the glassiness of the water, the wind dropped almost to nothing at some stages of the day.
.
Notice how 56 is giving room to 277 as they overlap to pass the buoy and the continuing change of positions as 99 over takes 97. See how far spread the front group is from the rear group at this stage. There are 10 boats in both A and B fleet.
With the light breeze I could get to the third mark before the fleet....not so later in the day............notice how many boats are gull winged..one sail out each side to cath the most of the wind behind them.
At Buoy 3 boat 36 has caught up wit the leading group. In the back ground they are setting up the other lake for people to play inside large plastic balls on the water....at £5 a go!
The trailing group..see how much the positions have changed.
Results at
http://myaed.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/corden-cup.pdf
This picture gives a good impression of the size of the lake and lenght of the course.
Henry concludes:
The result was a close run thing between the top three with Vernon
Appleton and Jon Alexander making their presence felt too. The final
order was determined by the last race. Prior to that Terry Burton was 2
points ahead of George Beacroft and Graham Bartholomew. Jon andVernon
then followed in that order. Terry, Graham and Jon did relatively poorly
in that last race while Vernon and George took the top spots.
Thus the final order was George Beacroft taking the Corden Cup for the first time,
with Terry Burton second and Graham Bartholomew third.
There were several ‘new’ boats in use. George and Graham were both sailing the mark 2 Arrival while Jon had a locally
built Italiko. John Richmond was sailing the ex-Malcolm Harris Isis whilst his awaits a replacement fin.
We were pleased to welcome 3 skippers from out of the District in the shape of Michael Chamberlain from Rotherham,
Chaz
Jordan from Hampton Court and Vinnie Zammit from Malta. Vinnie now
claims allegiance to theBroads club and so gets EDCS points!
Putting the Corden Cup results into the EDCS table gives us the result below.
Malcolm Harris still retains his top spot. John Torrance also retains his second spot. The rest of the top ten have
played musical chairs!
The next event of the EDCS for 2011 will be the Norfolk Trophy at theBroadsclub on September 18th. That is despite
being labelled as round 6 in several places.The explanation for that is that to make a bit of space in a crowded calendar we have combined the Thames Cup, EDCS 5, with the second day of the Eastern District National
Ranking events on September 25th.
Only members of ED clubs will be eligible to win the Thames Cup or get EDCS points.
Our thanks to Henry Farley for the excellent report
, quickly produced.
Ist place: George Beacroft.
Second place: Terry Burton.
Third Place: Jon Bartholomew
4th place, Vernon Appleton
Jon presents the fifth prize to himself! Well done Jon, good for all our spirits to have a HDMBC member placed in a big event.
Sixth place: Vinnie Zammit
Still smiling, Peter Sutton, 7th Place
8th, Rick Buxton
9th John Richmond and just in case you're wondering the last bottle is not for our Malcolm who organized the day and ran the computer and bought the prizes and collected the money and .................................
but for Michael Chamberlain who had to travel home early to fulfil other engagements but still came 10th today.
Other pictures may follow of a more general nature of the day...but no more commentary.......Webmaster.