After a breezy start to Horning Sailing Club’s summer season last week with racing on the river, Easter weekend saw two events take place. Sunday saw racing move to Hoveton Little Broad, which was open for the Easter period. On a blustery and gusty day, several keelboats, dinghies and river cruisers raced, with plenty of capsizes amongst the dinghies (a mixed fleet of Lasers, Splashes and a Laser 2) – along with the mast coming down on the Laser 2, and a dead heat between the dinghies of Jasmine Herring (Laser) and Hamish Harmer (Splash) in the third race, although Hamish won on handicap! The Yare & Bure fleet also saw particularly close racing, with Mark Harris (Blue Wings), Kevin Saunders (Silver Cloud) and Kim West (Nevada Blue) winning a race each, often separated by just a few seconds. In the Cruisers, George Brewis won both races in Amantani, whilst Steve Middleditch was first Yeoman in Scorpio, despite mistakenly heading for a mooring buoy instead of one of the racing buoys!
With the forecast having significantly improved from earlier in the week, Easter Monday’s Open Downriver race to Thurne and back attracted a strong fleet of river cruisers, keelboats and dinghies, including a number of visiting sailors, which was great to see – amongst these four International Star Keelboats from the Norfolk Broads Star Fleet. With the race starting from Woods Dyke in Horning, the breeze picked up nicely to provide a very pleasant sail with the tide. The course took sailors round a turning buoy towards Acle, before arriving at Thurne. After a lunch break, the sun made a welcome appearance and the return leg saw sailors sail back from Thurne to the Clubhouse, sailing through Horning Street. Racing itself was relatively uneventful, save for the Wayfarer losing steering on the return leg.
The race to Thurne was won in the Cruisers by the Riches crew in “Alice Rose”, and in the Stars by Nick Eastwood and James Cann sailing “Untergang” making extremely good time, with three of the four Stars finishing in under an hour, within 30 seconds of each other. The keelboats saw Kevin Edwards (Rebel Maid) take a win, whilst in the dinghies Sam Archer, sailing a Wayfarer, won on the downward leg. On the return passage, Phil Montague sailing Pickle took a win in the Cruisers, with Will Pank and Steve Calver winning the Stars in “Disastar”. First Keelboat on the return leg was Steve Middleditch in Yeoman “Scorpio”, whilst James Street sailing his Laser won the dinghies on the return.
Next weekend sees racing return to the River.
