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Great Britain, British Inlands 2007

Northampton

6 - 7 October

Report by Robert Deaves

Despite the forecast of very light winds, 30 OK Dinghies turned up at Northampton Sailing Club for the 2007 Inland Championships. Three sailors dominated proceedings in the very light winds with Tony Thresher walking away with the title, the veteran trophy and, for West Oxfordshire Sailing Club, the team trophy.

Alex Scoles had the honour of leading round the first two marks in all three races on Saturday. However he only managed to convert race two to a win. In the first race he let through Neil Goodhead and Thresher on the very tricky upwind legs. Thresher, sailing an old wooden O’Donnell hull he had just acquired demonstrated exceptional speed and good tactics to place second again in race two and then went on to win the final race of the day from Terry Curtis and Scoles. Overnight Thresher led by three points from Scoles, with Goodhead one point further back.

Sunday dawned flat calm and cloudy. After a short postponement race four started in little more than a zephyr and turned into a race of ups and downs for most of the fleet. However Goodhead found more pressure out of the start and led all the way, with the occasional bit of pressure from Curtis. Scoles started badly and played catch up and finally moved into third at the final gybe mark. Thresher took fourth from Robert Deaves by less than a second, but it was enough to give him the title as all further racing was abandoned. For a while everyone thought that Goodhead had won but a closer look at the sailing instructions revealed no discard after four races, so Thresher became the surprised winner and all those who had been black flagged in race three had to carry a large score.

The weekend was quite encouraging for the class with five juniors taking part and the light winds allowed them to really shine and provide notice for future years. Tom Lonsdale sailed exceptionally well to finish sixth overall and won a carbon tiller extension generously donated for the first junior by C2 Marine. Lonsdale also won, together with Thresher and Ross Lonsdale in 10th, the very attractive Blithfield Stump for the best club.