This year, the club acceded to requests to incorporate the GP14 National Championship and the SASEC Laser Regional Championships - the latter being a re-sail of the Regional Championships (Laser class) held in Mossel Bay. For that event, there were insufficient Lasers to form a class.
Held over three days from Sunday to Tuesday, December 29 to 31, there were over 40 boats sailing - ten GP14s, 16 Laser full rigs, three Laser 4.7s and a small senior open fleet of club sailors, comprising three Fireballs, a Sonnet and a 29er. After the Youth Nationals, the junior fleet was small, having four Tera Sports and two Optimists. There was also a small (GANDALF) fleet of senior sailors sailing a shorter course, with a Mirror and three Laser Radials.
A feature of the event was the participation of the Dickinson family from the UK - Tim, Stephanie and their sons Finley and Sam who are on a world cruise and were staying over in Knysna at the time. They are top dinghy sailors as well, and sailed a local GP14 in the Nationals. They have an Optimist and a Tera on board their 50' yacht, thus could enter these in the regatta. They sailed for Hayling Island Sailing Club.
Three races were sailed the first day in a light, gusty south wester. A strong south easter blew on the second day. One race was completed in the morning with wind speed increasing to 28 knots. The fleet was then sent in for an early lunch as the strength increased further with gusts over 30 knots. No further races could be set that day for safety reasons.
On Monday, the wind returned to the south west, similar to the first day. The GP14 fleet sailed five races that day, while the other fleets sailed four. A south easter returned for the last day of the regatta (New Year's Eve), but fortunately not as strong as day two. Three races were set in a wind that did not exceed 15 knots - ideal sailing conditions. Thus the GP14 fleet completed 12 races and the other fleets sailed 11.
The GP14 fleet had three Cape Town skippers and two Johannesburg skippers. It was totally dominated by the GLYC pairing of Anthony Parker and Ferdinand Holm. Their boat speed, boat handling and course tactics put them well in front of the others in most races. They won nine races, only dropping to a third place in race nine. This allowed them to transfer to a Fireball for the final two races to compete against the GLYC Fireballs without putting their GP14 lead in jeopardy.
Three very competitive youth teams sailed the event - Dabchick National champion Jason Gray, Laser 4.7 Youth National champion Georgou Divaris and Dabchick sailor Jayan Smart, mixing it with the Dickinson team. The pairing of Jayan Smart and Jenna Lammers proved to be the slightly more consistent, scoring seven second places to end up with a narrow points margin over the team of Jason Gray and Kirstie Gehrung. This pushed the senior Dickinson team down to fourth place.
The Laser fleet had boats from Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and the Southern Cape. David Shilton won two races on the first day, but he returned to restart in race two (when he did not have to) and could only recover to 10th place in that race. He also won the heavy wind race four, being chased by Alan Keen and Trevor Kitson, to lead the Laser fleet. But then the Knysna Yacht Club entrants (Shilton, Isaac, Fraser and Clarke) withdrew from the regatta, citing other commitments. Trevor Kitson also could not sail the last day, missing the final three races and putting himself out of the reckoning. This left the leader board being contested by Alan Keen, John Marc Olivier and Matthew Orton. Alan Keen dominated, to come out as the 2013 Laser Regional Champion.
The junior fleet of Teras and Optimists sailed together on handicap. The Teras were dominated by Markos Divaris, but the leading Optimist of Fin Dickinson was giving him a good run for his money. Divaris established an early points lead, but Dickinson started stringing together a series of race wins to whittle that lead down. After 12 races, Divaris came out ahead, a scant one point in front of Dickinson. Robyn Hellstrom was third on a Tera Sport.
The Open fleet was won by the Fireball of David Laing and Mark Dee, ahead of the single handed Sonnet of Dave Jones. There was a tie on points for first place in the GANDALF fleet between Mandy Lombard (Laser Radial) and Di Turner (Mirror s/h), with the tie-break going in favour of Turner.
The sponsorship from Lew Geffen/Sothebys International Realty (George), which ensured the success of the regatta, was gratefully acknowledged by the event organisers.
The Laser fleet at the start of one of their races, with second placed John Marc Olivier in the centre foreground and winner Alan Keen to his left.(Photo: W Hakkesteeg.)
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