Well done to those of our womenfolk who took part in the RYA National women's champs at Hayling at the weekend.  It blew old boots (22-30 kn)which made it a 420 benefit, however Jude & Rach Cooper, Lou Johnson & Ellie Bremer, and Lucy Burn & Rach Williamson all acquitted themselves very well.  Nobody in the entire fleet avoided a swim over the weekend, and some of them proved quite expensive in results terms.

Jude & Rach lead the Merlin charge, with Lou & Ellie not far behind at all. Lucy and MegaRach had their work cut out sailing very light, and were also on a very steep learning curve, this being the first time they had sailed together.

Well done chapesses - proud of you all!

GGGGGGGG

And thanks to GGGGGG and Andy Douglas for manning the Rescue Boats! Merlin's are amazing machines - you can depower the rigs sooooo much...Rach and I actually managed to sail the boat flat upwind and only capsized due to boat handling errors rather than being overpowered (Yes - in 30knots!!!). It was frustrating to go sideways faster than forwards but I guess that's what happens when you're about 20kg light on crew weight!! I've got some cracking photo's - who should I send them to in order to get them on this website??

Send them in to Mags, his e-mail is listed under committee members. Would love to see the ladies showing us how it is done!

Lucy I'm glad my boat seved you so well. Get the pics on the web, she is up for sale if anyone fancies a well loved Winder 3600 all the bits £6500
Give me a bell 07974110709.

Results for the ladieeees:
http://www.hisc.co.uk/openresults06/womensNats06.htm

I'm still aching, and I've never seen so many shades of blue on my legs and arms!
It was an epic weekend - well done to Jude and all the girls competing, the breeze on saturday was testing for the Volvo boats never mind us little dinghies!

also still aching :S thanks for an awesome weeekend lucy :D

photo's from the event are now available to view at www.eddiemays.com
I have a CD of them all but they're such hi-res pictures I can't seem to send them on an email!

Well done all...me and jen would have loved to have done it but poor jen's bloody uni finals got in the way!

Is a 420 now a Women only class? enough of them out there!
Notice Lou's got my sail number on again, might want to change that before we meet at the same open!

Well done gals looked like fun, bring on the Hayling Open!

And from the photos, we can see Rachel C having fun, or was that pain?! And Jude has her printout from Chimet showing 35 knots on Saturday! Well done ladies!

I am a little concerned that the crew in the RS200 seems to have a moustache - see Eddie May's picture 060520040.jpg....hmmmmm

Wot no spinnakers???

Oh there were spinnakers..... the photographer couldn't keep up though!! :-)

Yeah where are all the picture of Sundays three races?? Did Eddie get cold and go in?! I don't blame him if he did that rain came down hard in those squalls! SHame cause we were holding the kit right up to the last gasp - lots of behind the hoop stuff.. for the first time in my life I thought about behind the hoop gybing.. not possible!

And bear in mind that it takes a brave man, or woman, to stick the big one up in a high wind and in Chi Harbour on a rapidly ebbing tide! Those mudbanks are quite soft but all too easily found!

Mmmmm.... we found one of those when we had the kite up and the board tied down so that it wouldn't fly up of it's own accord.... oooohhhh, errrrr, I thought, but we were going so fast that I think we just ground our way through it!  Good job they're soft!  Shame the runs weren't any longer and there were no broad reaches as that's were we would've had the advantage over the the 420s.

Best fun was 420 baiting on the start line - they just reach/plane all over the place in those winds and we can point much higher on the beats.  So the game was to get close in under them on the start line, stuff them up and shoot them out the back door to give ourselves the advantage for all of about 2 minutes!  Pity we were well outnumbered!

Awesome weekend though and I'm still aching too!  As Tricky Dicky said at the Abersoch Champs in 98 - when the winds are like that, everyone has a story to tell - and he's right!  And I'm hanging onto that printout from Chimet, just to prove what we sailed in!  

Well done all the girls!!

Perhaps you could scan the Chimet report and have it posted on the site - not that anyone would dare doubt your word Jude! It does make impressive reading

Anyone know when the mens champs are? I can't find the date on the rya website