The Steve Nicholson Trophy is a key open meeting in the UK winter sailing calendar and is held annually at Northampton Sailing Club. It was a welcome return for the event, which raises money for Asthma UK in memory of Steve Nicholson, a young, popular and talented sailor at Northampton who tragically died after an asthma attack in 2000.
A Beautiful January Morning
Visitors were greeted by a very bright and sunny morning, but with a low mist and no wind. As more people arrived the mist cleared and the windsock started to wake up.
The PRO Martyn Emerson held a short briefing at 10am and set out the trapezoid course with many laps planned so he could shorten the race, as required.
This was the window between storm Malik and storm Corrie and the forecast was for 7-10 knots. A combination of the weather forecast and covid meant that numbers were down on previous years, but there were still 50 boats competing, evenly split between single and double-handers.
Between races the sailors enjoyed an excellent choice of hot food from the galley, and the bar was open all day for the spectators to enjoy.
The winners
The prize-giving, sponsored by Pinnell & Bax and Harken was held nice and promptly with some very good prizes presented to the youth fleet and the top three in both single and double-handed categories. Andy Couch of Blithfield took the single-handed honours in his Phantom and Thomas Gillard/Rachel Gray of Staunton Harold took the double-handed victory.
Olympic champion Q&A
After the prize-giving followed a Q&A session hosted by Dylan Fletcher-Scott - 49er Olympic Gold Medallist in Tokyo. He was pleased to return to Northampton, where he sailed from the age of 11 and started racing from 13 years of age, trained by several of the existing club members in his Hobbie 405.
Dylan talked about his memories of the club as well as giving a fascinating insight into Olympic experience.
Thank you to all the sailors and volunteers
The final amount of money raised, including donations, for Asthma UK is still to be confirmed.
Thanks go to all the sailors who took part as well as the many volunteers. These included members of Northampton Sailing Club and Northampton Sailability, who ran the racing, provided rescue support, collated the results, organised the prizes and ran the bar to make this another successful and very enjoyable event.
For more information about Northampton Sailing Club, go to www.northamptonsailingclub.org or check out the facebook page at www.facebook.com/NorthamptonSailingClub
Overall Results:
Pos Class Sail No Helm Crew Club PY R1 R2 Pts
Singlehanders
1st Phantom 1456 Andy Crouch Blithfield 1004 1 2 3
2nd RS Vareo 621 Luke Fisher Emberton 1093 3 4 7
3rd Phantom 1337 Richard Nurse Northampton 1004 9 1 10
4th Solo 5954 Oliver Davenport Northampton 1152 2 9 11
5th Streaker 1972 Veronica Falat Waveny & Oulton Broad 1155 5 6 11
6th Solo 6017 Mike Dray Littleton 1152 4 8 12
7th Phantom 1485 Rob Cook Northampton 1004 8 5 13
8th Phantom 1489 Paul Childs Hayling Island 1004 13 3 16
9th Phantom 1492 Jim Hopton Shustoke 1004 10 7 17
10th RS Vareo 443 Paul North Milton Keynes 1093 6 15 21
,Doublehaders
1st Merlin Rocket 3759 Thomas Gillard Rach Gray Staunton Harold 980 1 2 3
2nd RS 400 1376 Sam Knight Chris Bownes Bartley 953 4 1 5
3rd RS 400 1500 Nick Craig Adam Craig Frensham Burghfield 953 2 4 6
4th 505 9238 Ian Pinnell Alex Davies Northampton 883 3 3 6
5th 505 8935 Michael Sims Andrew George Carsington 883 5 5 10
6th GP14 14238 Fergus Barnham Jasper Barnham Northampton 1130 6 7 13
7th Flying Fifteen 3918 Paul Busby Neil Barford Northampton 1021 9 6 15
8th Scorpion 2034 Alan Krailing Simon Forbes SHSC 1030 8 11 19
9th Scorpion 2039 Nev Herbert Karl Thorne Lymington Town 1030 12 9 21
10th Lark 2468 Samuel Bailey Finlay Morgan South Staffordshire 1073 11 10 21
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