Mid-Thames Trophy

The first Club away visit of 2002 was to take part in the Mid-Thames Trophy event, hosted by Desborough SC this year, on Monday 6 May.

As Desborough SC is only a short trip upstream Bryan Clements with Michael Stevens towed three Graduate up there on Sunday with the safety boat. En route he took the opportunity to fill the safety boat with very low cost diesel at Shepperton Marina; it should last us for the season.

The Mid-Thames Trophy is an inter-club event between Desborough SC, Staines SC, Littleton SC, Aquarius SC and Hampton SC. with clubs taking turns to host it. As usual it was dominated by the host club with 10 boats, Aquarius did well to have 5 boats, Staines SC and Littleton SC each had 2 boats, Hampton SC was represented by their Commodore but no boat.

The Aquarius team was Mark Stevens and Robert Britton in a Grad, Rodger Wheeler and Fin Gloyn in the club Grad, Brian Clements and Peter Carpenter in a Grad, Richard Cannon and Bob Gloyn in a Signet, and Charles Dennis in a Laser.

Unfortunately the East wind, although the best for the Aquarius reach, was the worst direction for the Desborough reach. It was very light for the morning race and although stronger for the afternoon there was still no wind around the first mark and each lap the fleet tended to collect there. It seemed even more fluky and variable than it usually is at Aquarius. The short course was 3 port hand marks.

One rule that differed to ours was that if a mark was touched it was re-rounded. With mark 1 this could mean that while you were trying to re-round the boats around you could complete a lap.

The fleet was split into two starts , one for fast and one for slow boats, to reduce congestion on the start line; the results for the two starts were combined.

The race positions and final results were as follows: