LWA 2011 Icebreaker Series
Event 2: Queen Mary 19 Nov

     Yet another fabulous warm and sunny winter’s day! However when we arrived the wind still had to put in an appearance. It was due to be mostly southerly eventually and the Race Officer set a course in expectation of this direction, but when it did materialise the wind came from the east, so fortunately we could quickly switch to another corner of the box course.
  And to complement the weather, another great turnout of 29 sailors, four Adult teams and two Junior teams and one lone sailor, or should it be Leone sailor?? Congrats to Paul and his wife on the birth of a son!
     A really heartwarming feature of the current Icebreaker entry is the family aspect, Rob and Annette Kent with their daughters Emily and Rebecca, Chris Gibson with his daughters Emilia and Alysia, Paul Robinson and his son Andrew, Rod Davis and Janet Pain with Rod’s son Jonathan, and at Queen Mary Andy Gibson brought along his son Owen and two daughters, Jenna and Ellie! It will however be some time before Master Leone is seen on a Raceboard!
  

The wind finally worked itself up into something resembling the promised seven knots or so and we took to the water a little later than expected. Once again the sharp end of the fleet was highly competitive and most of the honours were shared between Rob Kent, Paul Leone, Chris Guest and James Moon, with the occasional intrusion into the top four byAdie Rippington and Andy Gibson. Paul made life difficult for the Farmoor Flyers to keep the Silicon Sisters at bay, and the “Sisters”  (fortunately the Trades Descriptions Act does not apply to windsurfing teams....) managed to beat the Flyers by 27 points, although admittedly the Flyers were without two of their star sailors, Andy Lacy and Russ Canning. Winning Team Silicon Sisters appear at right:

   Race One produced a major surprise in the shape of Emilia Gibson on her new Tushingham 5.8 XR:Race sail who beat half the fleet to the windward mark (most of whom were on 9.5s!), thus making a huge contribution to the repeated success of the Girls Only team in the Junior Section. See photo below with Ellie Gibson who somehow sneaked into the shot.
   It was a good day and a bad day for some of the youngsters to have a shot at sailing a Raceboard, the weather was kind but the wind was not really positive enough for them to make a real impression. Matt Barton soldiered on with his RS:X and demonstrated his exceptional pumping ability to finish in the top half of the fleet despite being continually hassled by old men on raceboards with their 9.5 sails. At the prizegiving Matt was awarded a £50 cheque from the “LWA Young Windsurfer of the Year“ prize fund in recognition of his extraordinary dedication and determination to his sport. As announced in the Bewl Report last week, the actual title winner was Galahad Wisbey but Matt was the next strongest contender. Matt is shown below receiving his prize from LWA Chairman Paul Robinson.

   Our Final Event of the year is this coming Saturday at Oxford, will the Home Team give the Silicon Sisters a run for their money? Will the Boys Only Team challenge the supremacy of the Girls Only? Who will top the Individual rankings? Come to Farmoor and upset a few applecarts!

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FULL RESULTS SEE BELOW: