2011 July/August’s Newsletter
The summer’s here, ‘tis the time for National and World Sailing Events. 
Mid July already and the club saw its annual Regatta Weekend take place a couple of weekends ago. Yet again we were blessed with good sailing conditions for most of the two days and the only hiccup came during the first race on Sunday when the wind swung through most points of the compass, did a disappearing act for about half an hour and the rain came down in torrents just to complete the collection of natural phenomena. Over 60 boats took part during the weekend with one of our Juniors, John Wingeatt, coming out overall winner of the John Barnes Plate with the best performance over the six races of the weekend (no discards allowed). Stephanie Wingeatt won the Open Class bottle boat race with Jack Exley the winner of the One Design Class. Lots of tents appeared on the Lowton site and the clubhouse rang with music on both Friday and Saturday evenings. If you didn’t manage to get down at all, book the dates in your diary for next year. For the full report and two great galleries of photos, go to the club website.
In June our team of nine Juniors did us proud at the Southport SC Junior 12 Hour Race. Run every year, it does what it says on the tin and requires teams of Juniors to sail around the Marine Lake at Southport for 12 hours. The classes of boats allowed are Enterprise, GP14 and Bosun. As a club, we do not sail any of these classes as a
fleet, so it was much to the credit of our young sailors (renamed ‘The Flash Ones’) that we were 8th overall, 3rd Enterprise behind two clubs which major on the Enterprise, won the Under 14 Trophy and missed out on the fastest first two laps by an under 18 helm and crew by about half a boat length. All this achieved by a team with an average age of just over 14. The event was also the first outing for the new Junior Polo Shirt, sponsored jointly by Bryn Griffiths and the club, available to all Juniors who represent the club at such events and things such as the North West Junior Travellers Trophy. (For further details on the shirt talk to Diane Griffiths and for the full report and photos, see the club website.)
We’re now coming up to that time of year when there are a
lot of Nationals and Worlds events coming up on the sailing calendar. This is especially true for the Juniors and their supporting parents who will be at such exotic places as Pwllheli (Optimists), North Berwick (Topper Nationals), Dun Laoghuaire (Topper Worlds), Weymouth (Laser Radial Nationals) and La Rochelle (Laser Radial Youth Worlds). Our best wishes and hopes go with all of those competing in these events and we look forward to hearing about their
performances later on in the summer.
The extension is now moving on in leaps and bounds with the
internal work being almost complete. (Look on the website for Paul’s panoramic photo.) Paul Davies is currently finishing off the electrics whilst Howard and Roy (Thomason) have put an enormous amount of effort in getting the walls in place, plastered, painted and the ceiling in. The carpet tiles are down in the majority of the area and some of the superb pieces of furniture, sourced at extremely good prices by Bryn, have been put into the room. The last two major
tasks are the installation of the folding door system between the old and the new and the recovering of the carpeted area in the old part of the clubhouse with vinyl flooring. These two jobs will be tackled after the summer holidays are out of the way with the aim to have a grand opening, perhaps in September. The date for this will be finalised in a few weeks. Watch the website for more details. Please note though that now the carpet is down and the new furniture is in place this area must NOT be entered with wet sailing gear on of any type, not even just to travel through.
On Sunday 31st July, Bolton will be holding the third annual IronManUK Triathlon. For those of you who have not heard of this
before, it involves a 2.4 mile open water swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride and, to finish you off, a full marathon. The swim is in Pennington Flash and again, like last year, we will be supporting the event with safety craft and a camera boat and Oakwood Youth Group (who are one of our Group members) will be providing safety cover with their kayaks. The effect on the sailing and racing at the club will be negligible with the swim starting at 6.30am and finished by about 8.30am. There will be some early morning training on the water on the Friday and Saturday mornings but this should be completed by about 9.00am. A few large buoys will be placed on the Flash which sailors will need to avoid but the main effect will be the local road closures around Leigh. There is a link on the club website www.llsc.org.uk giving you details of all the road closures for the event. Access to the club down Sandy Lane will not be a problem but other parts of Leigh are heavily affected. If you want to watch the swimmers you can obviously come down and watch them from the club foreshore.
On Monday 29th August, we will be yet again running our annual Topper 6 Hour Race but this year we are expanding it to include Lasers with separate prizes for both classes of boats. If you are
interested in entering a team for either boat (and you don’t have to be a junior to sail in a Topper and you don’t have to be an adult to sail in a Laser) further details will be on the website soon.
Following on from the Topper 6 Hour race will be the Junior Training Camp taking place from Tuesday 30th August to Thursday 1st September. Further details can be obtained by getting in touch with Richard Catchpole. These are great events for our Juniors and I have not heard of one participant who has not enjoyed themselves at previous camps.
In terms of Open events at the club we still have a full programme right to the end of the summer season. On Saturday September 17th
we have the North West Topper Traveller (and a Flash Closure), on Sunday September 25th, again a Flash Closure, we have the joint Laser/Solo (where we are expecting close to 70 boats). On October 15th/16th (not the 8th/9th as in the Yearbook) we have the Laser
4.7 Ladder event, run in conjunction with the Laser 3000 Open meeting, with Saturday of this weekend being a Flash Closure. The Sunday will see the visitors racing early on Sunday morning with normal club racing beginning at noon. On the weekend of 5th/6th November the National 12’s will be having their final event of the summer with a full afternoon’s racing on Saturday and racing on Sunday morning before we hold the Guy Fawkes Pursuit race in the afternoon.
Finally, we shall be entering a team for the annual West
Lancs Yacht Club 24hour race on the weekend of September 10th/11th.
We are aiming to make an improvement on our result of 31st overall,
17th Enterprise from 2010 (which was a good improvement on the 50th
from the previous year). If you are interested in participating, either as a helm or a crew, enthusiasm is more relevant than experience. Drop me an email over the next week or two if you are interested and we will be arranging some training in the boat before the race.
Happy Holidays.
Mike Baldwin
Commodore