Saturday 20 September 2014

Old GPs

When our sailing club turns up at open meetings, there is always much made of the number of competitive vintage GP14s (and the fact that they are all yellow!). So we decided to capitalise on this and invite the other old boats to race with us on the river. Of course, vintage is a specific label (mark 1 etc), so we had to make it "vintage and classic" which basically included anyone brave enough to sail on the river.

This turned out to be 8 GPs, which is about as many as any sane person would want at a start line with a northerly wind.

Nathaniel and Ian took our boat and had lots of fun despite nearly not getting off the jetty due to jammed main halyard and then having to paddle to the start!

Having lost the coin toss for who was to sail (or at least, that's what we told her), Dorothea and I stayed in the club and played. Both safety boats were out being official, so we were definitely confined to land. So we took silly photos of ourselves:

We went for a walk in the drizzle up to the race area and tried to take photos with my phone (never terrible successful when it comes to sailing):

It looked fun. There was some very tight racing with the second to fifth places always unsure until the final lap. But Ian and Nathaniel did very well. Ian managed to sail with Nathaniel's help, and Nathaniel managed to stay interested and relatively alert for three whole races! They came fourth overall. The prize giving included the awarding of the Round Holes trophy, specially constructed by Hugh, and Nathaniel and Ian were awarded a prize for coming fourth and a prize for the youngest crew. Never let it be said that Steve Parry hasn't done everything in his power to ensure our kids enjoy sailing!

The Chair of the GP association collects his prize.

Nathaniel declined to stand up in front of everyone and collect his prize, so here he is clutching his chocolate at home!

Of course, Steve's efforts are producing sterling results. The kids love being at the club and had great fun getting involved in EVERYTHING! It is a testament to the patience of the club members that neither of them have been thrown off a jetty yet!

Thea was able to stop whining about not sailing by the end of the race, and was awarded with a good sail with some additional breeze at the end of the day.

Everyone was happy.

Did you want a blow by blow account of the racing?(!) Why not check our the report on the online version of Yachts and Yachting!

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