After another successful BUSA RYA Match Racing Championship, Andy Cornah from Southampton University successfully won the BUSA Match racing for the second year running. The quality of racing throughout the event was probably the highest seen at this event for the last few years.
Sixteen teams arrived at Rutland Water Sailing Club in the earlier hours of last Friday morning to be greeted by patchy fog and light winds. After weigh-in and registration the teams where split into two round robins and the fog lifted and wind built to allow sailing to begin in ideal conditions which saw some very competitive racing.
Saturday saw teams starting sailing at 9.30am, in lighter winds, which throughout the day became shifty and inconsistent. Midway through the afternoon racing was stopped as the wind completely died. However, teams stayed out on the boats and waited and by 4.30pm the wind started to fill in and the skies cleared allowing the round robin to be continued.
At this stage the round robins only had one remaining flight to run on Sunday morning, however the winners of the two groups had already been decided with Connor Myant [Exeter], Nick Cherry [Southampton] and Jon Pinner [Cambridge] jointly lead Group A and Mike Henning leading Group B. This enabled the teams to be placed into silver and gold leagues.
By 10 am on Sunday morning the silver league where let loose and another five flights took place. Matt Greenfield from Bath University took the lead in this group wining all but one of his races. The morning passed by as the breeze increased, and began to produce some exciting and close matches. Soon after the gold league, comprising of Nick Cherry, Jon Pinner, Connor Myant, Andy Cornah, Mark Lees and Mike Henning, took to the water. Andy Cornah won all of his races, accept against Mark Lees [London], who managed to hold on to 2nd place overall with three wins out of five. Nick Cherry also performed well managing to win three out of five races to place himself in 3rd place.
The winner Andy Cornah and his crew of Sam Carter, James Roche, Rob Miller and Orwin Murray also won a place in the RYA National Match Racing Finals in October, where they will race against some of the best match racers in the UK. Mark Lees and Nick Cherry have been invited to attend the Playoffs on the 2nd/3rd October a Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy.
RYA Racing Services Manager David Atkinson commented, “The standard was very high and this meant we had some very close racing. It was good to see a growing number of competitors coming to this event and increasing the standard of Match Racing.”
The next RYA Match Racing event is the Clubs and Classes event on the 14th/15th May at Rutland Sailing Club. If you would like to enter, please download a form from the RYA Match Racing page.
Results:
1, Southampton University: Andy Cornah, Sam Carter, James Roche, Rob Miller and Orwin Murray
2, London University: Mark Lees, Nicky Macgregor, Jim Eynon, Chris Downham and Jon Pegrum.
3, Southampton University: Nick Cherry, Ed Males, Oscar Helstorm, Katie Vincent and Tom Wicher
4, Southampton Institute: Mike Henning, Simon Berry, Dougie Bird, Jo Assael
5, Cambridge University: Jon Pinner, Tom Heywood, P Davidson, Bethan Carden
6, Exeter University: Connor Myant, Ben Bainbridge, Tom Odel, Jex Fowke
The Silver league results will be posted in the next couple of days.