Medway Dragon Class Report - July 2008

With two racing series already accounted for, we are now well into the season and what weather have we all had. I can scarcely remember a Saturday where we have not been donning oilskins, lifejackets and checking that our safety equipment is all at hand. However, despite the fresh to strong winds, we have also had some excellent sailing and indeed racing with plenty of windward leeward courses and exploring parts of the Medway not frequented by the racing classes, particularly Otterham and Yantlett channels. The sailing area here is huge and has much less current than in the main channel. It is also useable 3 hours either side of high water and this year's tides have particularly favoured sailing here.

The sailing season started with an attempted warm up series the week before racing started properly but the weather was cold, wet and windy so despite many kind offers to run it, it was called off. The Proton Cup spring series was sailed in the usual brisk conditions and it was clear that Scimitar sailed by Julian and Clare Sowry and Philip Catmur were going to be the boat to beat. They won 3 out the 4 races with Esoteric taking one win and second place and Valkyrie 3rd.

The Dragon Flagon was also won convincingly by them but Valkyrie got two first places and one of these was achieved with the old BBC crew line up of Booth, Boyd an Clarabut. This was Philip Clarabut's first race since their dragon was overwhelmed at Cannes last year in gale force winds and it showed that he had not lost his touch. Encouragingly, other winners have come through with a superb win by the Gadabout team. Geoff Prout and Alan Nicholas sailed a blindingly good race and were quite uncatchable in sometimes capricious conditions. Edwin Hannant in Gandalf has also been sailing well and has plenty of boat speed too. This combined with excellent local knowledge mean few mistakes are made and he has also had a win and a number of seconds. Richard Jones in Exult now has a regular crew with Bruce Boyd and it is clear that they are much more competitive with a fast boat.

The Medway regatta has recently been completed with two races on Friday and Saturday and one on Sunday. The course setting and standard of race officering was good and conditions on the first two days were the usual windy offering. Julian and Clare Sowry deservedly won with Gandalf second. The turnout for the regatta was poor and some class members regretted the lack of racing out in the Estuary. The format for the event will be changing for next year as Sail East will not be coming and perhaps the longer racing into the Thames can be re introduced.

Away from the Medway, Len Jones and the Coltarts braved Lowestoft at the East Coast Dragon Championships over the May Bank Holiday. The weather again was very poor with gales so no result was obtained although Len got 2 wins from the Saturday racing, the only day we were able to sail. I must say that the Medway compares very favourably with sailing on the North Sea over sandbanks in breaking seas; it was quite frightening at times but also exhilarating with some long very fast surfing.

Len and Simon Winn went to Plymouth for the South Coasts and Edinburgh Cup. Again, the weather was not kind but Len was second in the first event and fourth in the Edinburgh Cup against international competition. Well done. Simon also had some good results and it was clearly an enjoyable if wet couple of events.

Happy sailing for the rest of the season