GEORGE NEWS - The sailing season at the George Lakes Yacht Club has come to a close and scheduled racing goes into recess until August this year.
As per tradition, the final day of the sailing season was marked by the traditional Sail Past, where the fleet sails in line astern and salute the Commodore as each boat goes past. This was preceded by a short match- racing series.
For the match racing, three short fleet races were held to select four to go into the match- racing sequences. Those selected were Henry Paine, Matthew and Luke de Villiers and Malcolm Osborne.
After the round robin of match races, De Villiers and Paine came out ahead to go into a best of three to determine the winner. De Villiers won the first match, but Paine the second, so the third race was the decider. This was won by De Villiers, who is the winner of the Clive Davy match racing trophy.
While this was happening, other craft undertook the Round the Island race. James Vonk, after his win in the Tera Pro National Championships and selection to the World Championships (Weymouth) last weekend, romped home to win this race, ahead of the Optimists of Sean Vonk and Conrad Holm.
Two weeks ago, three of our Optimists went to an Optimist training camp at Milnerton Aquatic Club (MAC), Cape Town, in conjunction with the Qingdao China sporting partnership. They then went on to the Western Cape sailing championships held at Langebaan last weekend, for their first experience of sailing a major regatta at sea. John Paul Buys came out as the winner in a small novice fleet, while Kyle Koeries came 18th and Thomas Lawa was 20th in the main Optimist fleet.
Matthew de Villiers also went to MAC to assist with the coaching, then sailed his Dabchick in the Western Cape Championships. He finished a close second place in an Open fleet, sailing with 3 Mirrrors and 5 Dabchicks.
Also sailing at Langebaan in the Laser Radial fleet were Robyn and James Hellstrom. Robyn got 9th place while James was on the podium, as usual.
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