Musto Skiff Inland Championships 07-08 November 2009

Report by Michael Palfreman

Record turn out of 43 boats

Despite a variety forecasts a fantastic turnout of 43 Musto Skiffs made the journey to Grafham Water. In stark contrast to previous years weather extremes were avoided, neither did they receive a beasting from the weather gods nor did they wake from their slumber on Sunday morning to be confronted by a glassy windless calm. Conditions ranged from approximately 5-15 knots over the course of the weekend (depending on which part of the lake you were on) so at some point every sailor in the fleet was happy and of course being inland, it was quite shifty.

As an interesting aside, the event also saw the culmination of the Southern Travellers series. For years this trophy has hung on a wall in the Stenhouse household causing UV damage on on a scale that now requires urgent re-decoration. Now it was to be contested by Bruce Keen and Dan Henderson who arrived at Grafham with a point between them.

The series began with a win for Keen in the windiest race of the weekend who, along with Henderson began to put together a strong series. As ever Richard Stenhouse operated with his usual metronomic precision winning the next two races, with Mike Palfreman taking the final race on Saturday. Results after the first four races showed Stenhouse holding a slender lead from Keen, with Palfreman and Henderson a few points back in third and fourth respectively. An interesting challenge of the last two events (apart from trying to keep a straight face at the briefing) has been the short reaches to the outer loop and the finish. Get it right and you set yourself up perfectly for the downwind leg, wrong and you either blasted off well below your intended target or stall out as the rest of the fleet sail over the top you before a slow, humble roll into a windward capsize from which there is no escape from the post race taunts of fellow competitors.

Sunday dawned with the wind now coming from the opposite side of the lake and slightly lighter. Nick Hollis and Iver Ahlmann dominated first place for the last three races despite determined attempts from Stenhouse to keep them at bay. Comments such as ‘...they were still trapezing in my dirty air’ paying testament to their boatspeed. Henderson looked to have handed the Southern Series to Keen with a 13th in the 5th race before coming back with a 2nd and 3rd in the last two races to take the series trophy. Stenhouse ultimately did enough to keep his nose in front and win the open from Henderson with Palfreman in 3rd and Keen 4th. Alastair Conn always posed a threat and was unlucky not to come away from the event with a first race victory finishing in 5th overall. Amongst the new faces Jeremy Troughton deserves special mention for stepping up off a flight from China on Friday and driving up on Saturday morning before completing a rather demanding hat-trick of first time out in his Musto Skiff, first race, and first event in one weekend after not setting foot in a dinghy for 8 years.

Thanks as ever to Grafham Water Sailing Club for getting the races off quickly in ever changing conditions throughout the weekend, and after short negotiations incredibly generous provision of prizes ultimately reaching down as far as 9th place.

Full results here >>>