Light airs signalled the start of the 42nd 24 Hour Race on the marine lake at Southport on Saturday. Starting in the ‘A’ team was Ian Platt and Alex Pilkington and starting for the ‘B’ team were Chris and Julie Waddington.
Rounding the last mark of the course for the first time, Ian in our GP14 and the Lark of South Staffs had already pulled away from the chasing pack but as the wind dropped it was obvious it was going to be a hard battle to keep ahead of the pack. Many teams (not us) were penalised heavily for rule 42 (pumping).
As the ‘B’ team were out ‘for the fun of it’ we made sure as many people as possible got to sail so even in the middle of the night when the wind had dropped to nothing I even got a sail (ably crewed by Leanne)! Annoyingly, after two and a half hours in the boat and only three laps completed the wind picked up just in time for Paul and Curtis Mearns to have a go. At least we didn’t record the slowest lap of the ‘B’ team, which I believe went to Stuart Catterall and Helen Brittan who suffered the worst of the lack of wind to take an hour and a half to do a lap.
The wind filled in a bit more on Sunday morning and with only an hour to go we even saw some boats capsizing!
The ‘A’ team were missing Mike Senior this year as he’d defected to South Staffs but the ‘B’ team were still able to field a Senior with Mike’s mum, Pauline, completing the last three-quarters of an hour crewing for Julie Waddington.
In the end, the ‘A’ team were pipped to the post by a flying Lark and scored an impressive second place and several other trophies. The ‘B’ team thoroughly enjoyed their sailing as many hadn’t sailing in the event (and even a GP14) before.
Especially big thanks to Mark Platt and Peter Burton for lending their boats and to Dennis for doing the timekeeping for the whole 24 hours!
Also, thanks to Ian Platt, Alex Pilkington, Mark Platt, Ruth Shevelan, Gary Deighan and Dale Knowles for manning the ‘A’ team. Chris and Julie Waddington, Graham and Julie Courtney, Mike Critchley, Nathan Waring, Tom Robinson, Peter Burton, Simon Craig, Chris Aubrey, Stuart Catterall, Helen Brittan, Leanne Pilkington, Paul Mearns, Curtis Mearns, Keith Roberts, Becca Paul and Pauline Senior for sailing in the ‘B’ team. If I’ve missed any sailors out, sorry, I’m still suffering from the lack of sleep!
Not forgetting thanks to all the members who turned up to help and to support the teams over the weekend.
Dennis has some photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/ShevPix/2008_24hr
Photos I posted live from the event are currently still at http://www.sail.org.uk/24-hour-race (the times are wrong though!).
Next year three teams?
Andrew.
