Bolton Sailing Club

If you’ve been to the club over the last week or so you’ll notice that it has been a bit quiet around the place!

Bolton has had a large contingent up at Bassenthwaite Sailing Club for the last week for their annual ‘Bass Week’.

It was my first time sailing at Bass and being on the water with over 100 other boats of all different shapes and sizes was a bit of an experience. Worst was having to sail around the committee boat to get the course while trying to dodge everyone else. Sadly David and Lesley didn’t quite manage to dodge one Laser and David has now got a spot of woodwork to do to the side of his Grad.

There were 9 separate fleets;
- The Fast Handicap for the likes of the RS400s, Musto Skiffs and Merlin Rockets.
- The Flying Fifteen fleet
- The RS200 fleet
- The Laser fleet
- The Medium Handicap Fleet for the likes of the National 12, Supernova, Phantom and Scorpion
- The GP14 fleet
- The Enterprise fleet
- The Slow Handicap fleet for Solos, Graduates, Toppers etc
- Mirror fleet

Bolton was well represented with Andy Pilkington and assorted crew in his Merlin Rocket in the Fast Handicap, Neil Platt in his Flying Fifteen and GP14 fleets (yes, he sailed in both throughout the week!), Andy Flitcroft (Supernova), Jeff Robinson (Supernova), Peter Burton and Susan Robinson (Scorpion), and myself (Phantom) in the Medium Handicap. David Ivins and Lesley Johnson (Graduate), John King (Solo), David and Pauline Senior (Graduate), Neil Holden (Solo), Tom Robinson (Topper Byte), Dave Barclay (Solo), Rhea Burton (Streaker), Harry Green and gang (Feva), and Warren Price and Keith Roberts (Graduate) in the Slow Handicap.

At the end of the week there was plenty of glassware on its way back down the motorway to Bolton, especially from the Slow Handicap fleet with a Bolton 1, 2, 3 seen many a time at the top of the results!

Rhea Burton even managed a fantastic 32nd out of 77 in the first Pursuit race of the week being 2nd Bolton boat behind Andy Pilkington. She even managed to hold off the pursuing Bolton Supernovas! Okay, so there was a small mistake in the number of laps Rhea had done… everyone else had done three laps, Rhea had managed two when she sailed across the line with a load of other finishing Streakers and was booked down as finishing. It was only later when the Streakers behind her in the results complained that the mistake was spotted. Ah well Rhea, maybe next year!

I’ve uploaded plenty of photos to the gallery and I’m sure some more will appear soon. Have a look at http://www.sail.org.uk/gallery/v/sailingaway/bass2006/

You can find all the results on the Bassentwaite website at http://www.bassenthwaite-sc.org.uk
Well done to all who competed, whether at the top of the results… or at the bottom!

See you back at the club,

Andrew Craig,
Vice Commodore.