A packed Prize Giving for the 15th Edition of the SailJuice Winter Series opened the 2024 RYA Dinghy Show, on 24 February 2024. Held at the Farnborough International Exhibition Cente, saw over 100 prizes presented. Series organisers Andy Rice and Simon Lovesey looked back on a winter with a growing number of competitors and some close racing in mainly breezy conditions.
Results
Changes afoot for next year’s Seldén Sailjuice Winter Series
Great weather and excellent attendance contributed to one of the most successful editions of the Seldén Sailjuice Winter Series in its 15-year history, so why change anything?
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So the saying goes. So after one of the most successful editions of the Seldén Sailjuice Winter Series in its 15 year history, why consider changing anything? Co-organisers Simon Lovesey and Andy Rice are looking to move elements of the Series in a slightly different direction whilst wanting to keep the core of its success intact.
“Simon and I are always interested in where we can take things next with the Seldén Sailjuice Winter Series,” explained Andy. “Not all of the innovations we have brought in have been met with universal acclaim, far from it in fact. There was some resistance to introducing advance online entry via a website, rather than accepting cash and cheques on the day, believe it or not. Now it seems like a no-brainer.
“Moving from standard RYA PY handicap numbers and adopting the more radical Great Lakes numbers drew conspiracy theories that we were changing the numbers for dubious motives, but I think mostly people can see after a decade of Great Lakes experience that their numbers are producing very fair racing for many more classes than used to be the case.
“And GPS tracking of the races is not only there for entertainment purposes but is also proving to be a very useful back-up for cross-referencing the accuracy of finishing positions and resolving scoring queries.”
One of the less controversial moves was to bring in a photographer for the Series, the indefatigable Tim Olin who goes out in all weathers to take such amazing photos of so many different boats and sailors.
New Life for Old Boats
The Seldén Sailjuice Winter Series has always attracted the very best sailors, such as former season winners like Peter Gray, Nick Craig, Tom Gillard and Rachael Gray, Simon and Katie Horsfield, and Roger Gilbert and Ben McGrane. “It’s great to see such high-calibre competitors,” said Simon Lovesey, “but we also want to attract other sailors who can’t necessarily afford state-of-the-art equipment. We’re really pleased to have seen such an upswing in youth and junior participation this winter, particularly sailors from Greig City Academy using old Lasers that they have refurbished themselves, and Edward Clifford and Alex Standley racing their 65-year-old Norfolk Punt around the circuit. That’s what we’d like to see more of in the future.”
Seldén Mast’s Richard Le Mare agrees. “One of the reasons why Seldén has continued to support the Sailjuice Winter Series over the past five years is we really want to support the grassroots of the sport. It’s not just because we love the sport, which of course we do, but ours and other marine businesses depend on the grassroots being healthy. There’s no shortage of boats in boat parks around the country, there’s far too many of them sitting under mossy-green covers, unloved and mostly unused. So anything that can be done to get those boats out sailing again is something we at Seldén are very keen to promote.”
With that in mind, Simon is drawing from various data sources including SailRacer GPS tracking to create an ‘Old Boats Ranking’, and is looking for broader support from the industry. “We’re reaching out to the trade to back this initiative with prizes to help people upgrade their boats. Like Richard and his colleagues at Seldén are saying, this has the potential to work for everyone in the sailing world.”
If you’d like to find out more and get involved in this initiative, please email simon.lovesey@sailracer.co.uk and/or say hello at the prizegiving this Saturday (see below).
Coaching Support
Many sailors across the fleet are using the Seldén Sailjuice Winter Series to hone their skills. Where else can you compete against 100 boats and some of the country’s top sailors in some very close racing? Next winter we will be introducing coach support from an event briefing session, inghy park coach advice and post-event debriefing based on video and tracking content from the racing.
New Ranking Categories
Many sailors compete representing the forces (ASA, RAFSA, RNSA) or their school, this winter there will be new extracted rankings for Forces and Schools.
Handicap Forum – 26 March
Your chance to understand how handicaps work and contribute to new developments.
hello everyone welcome um Welcome to our first uh talk of the day we have with us here the Seldon s juice winter series um welcome to the much awaited priz giving ceremony today we gathered to celebrate the remarkable achievements and dedicated dedication displayed throughout the thrilling series of events without further Ado let’s Kickstart this memorable occasion by honoring our talented sailors and teams who have demonstrated exceptional skill and sportsmanship throughout the series please welcome to the stage Simon ly and Andy [Applause] rice good morning good morning thanks ay and good luck today great to have a gold medalist here as our as our compare for the Rya dingy show I’m Andy rice this is Simon ly and for the past 15 years we’ve been organizing the S juice winter series and I’m pleased to say for the past 5 years it has been the Seldon s juice winter Series so Richard thanks for your continuing support which was uh through some pretty difficult times of course covid got in the way a few years ago but it really feels that this is the season that we got back on track again and it was helped I have to say by the fact that it was quite a mild winter today is it’s probably colder in here than it was for some of the events uh during the the past few months um and we’ve also been blessed with some fantastic Breeze and and the breeze had its say in the outcome of the series which of course we will be getting to as we run through the prize giving Simon we’ve we’ve had some really good turnouts this season how many um entries did we have in total do you remember offand well it was nearly 600 about a thousand competitors uh incredibly 93 classes so we’ve seen the number of number of sailors and number of classes growing so good good growth all around and that’s why we think that the the Seldon SG twinter series is such a good fit for the a dingy show because it does embrace pretty much everything that you see in this room and we were even graced with the presence of some IQ foil foiling wind Surfers at the tiger trophy at Rutland that’s the first time that we’ve had wind Surfers racing against what’s predominantly a monal dingy circuit but we also do have keelboats we have some multihulls and we even have some traran The Challengers although I don’t know if I’m allowed to call you a traran or not but there are three hulls definitely not a traran definitely not but we love having you there and uh you keep on coming back year after year as do so many others so we must be doing something right and it’s absolutely fantastic to see some of those perennial performers I see Richard botting um there in the the audience so many of you turn out for pretty much all the events we had eight of those events this season and we completed all Races which is a credit to the wind Goods but also to the clubs that put on some races in some pretty marginal conditions and I think some have been shamed into it by David Wilkins who never holds back it could be stormforce 9 and David wilin would still put the tiger trophy on and storm Garrett if you remember back at the beginning of the the year was putting a lot of things in doubt uh but some events went ahead around Christmas that in other years might not have done so anyway we’ve got a lot to get through Simon on to the first event so we started out Wendy this is this is the theme um and uh well in fact it was Sam Pasco who traped his masto ski to just a single point victory at the fernhurst book straup Dash in on the 18th and 19th of November quite a long time ago now um and the boat that he beat they were just on the video just then that was Tom Morrison guy Filmore in the rs800 and in third place Olympic aspirant Aaron Holman and Alex Hughes they won their Pursuit race on the Sunday and they were third overall and we had a diverse entry of um let’s see Sailors from 11 to 76 years old and we had 41 youth competitors and we’ve struggled to see a lot of Youth participation in other years um I think maybe uh sometimes people question the relevance of this kind of racing is it is it at all relevant to Winwood leid in big Jam Championship racing well yes it absolutely is because once you can do this you can do anything it’s so much more difficult to get around a racetrack with 40 or 50 different types of boat massive traffic jams at uh at leid marks so it makes your One Design racing during the summer relative ly straightforward we believe so that was the dracott dash okay so first category is the top class and top club um great to see uh representative clubs and classes and uh this is all about getting three boats out there based on the best three results of each class and each Club across each event so top class is again the ilka sevens I don’t know if they’ve got a representative here and uh top club we had 153 clubs mixed through sort of small big from all parts of the country and the top club is drot water okay so while they’re coming up we’ll move on to the D flyer Andy so number two event was the D datet fly we had 92 entries at datet near Heathrow Airport and and this was a a really really windy one at times uh just as the second race was going into sequence the wind was gusting nearly 40 knots and there were more boats upside down than actually sailing so there was a brief postponement so that the breeze could drop a little bit so it was only in the upper 20s with gust to 35 knots when the race actually got underway um and that is one of that’s credit to one of our um race officers uh Seb culi uh a 49er sailor and now into the must skiff Seb is another one who doesn’t like to hold back he likes to get the racing in if possible and that’s what he managed to do and somehow well me being a Musto ski sailor I don’t quite understand how s Pasco man manages to wrestle one of these boats around but it was again s Pasco who won that um despite some really hot competition from the likes of ianj Wade and Hugo Valentine in the 420 they’ve been a big theme of um of of this uh Circ this year uh but again it was s Pasco for the second um for the second event running that managed to win okay right so the next uh results category is the agage categories so what we do here is Lally take every race so some people get a bit confused because the overall results are based on event results we’re taking every every race it’s good to see we ran 25 races which again is pretty much a record we usually use one or two um so the first category is where with both Youth and juniors and they they saw a combined entry of 122 which as Andy said is encouraging to see there so in juniors third was uh Freddy Sunderland and his ilka six from dracott second was James Davis and various crews in the 3000 from all the way from shopshire and first was Finley Cochran in his laser from Yorkshire if you could come on and get your prizes over there that would be great so in the okay so in the youth category third was um James Davis second was Finley and first was imagin Wade and Hugo Valentine okay so moving on to the 1913s group um third was Jamie Blake in his ilka s Sam Barker in the masto ski from Castle Cove for second and the winner of that group was Ben flower I don’t think he’s here um the biggest category was the 31 to 60 categories and uh third was Richard botting I’ve seen him in a blaze second was Luke fiser in his RS varo and the winner was Sam Pasco in his musco Skip and the final age category is the uh the Masters 93 entries here in third place was dun greenhow in his challenger all the way from Bassam weight uh in the Lake District second was Roger Blake and Jonathan osgard and I think other Crews at time in the Osprey I think Roger there and the winner was one of our old favorites Val Millard and uh a challenger from ratland Sailing Club okay so moving forward to just after the Christmas The Brass Monkey which always proves a good post Christmas sort of event so the yorkshire’s brass monkey it’s our northernmost event and it was on the 27th of December and this was one where Storm Garrett was predicted to maybe get in the way and maybe it wouldn’t be able to go ahead but principal race Officer Phil Whitehead and his team did to did decide to go ahead but you can tell that the fact that it was a 420 that won both race R es that it was still a pretty Breezy event for the 75 entries and it was Aaron Holman we’ve already mentioned Aaron in a 470 this this time he was helming a 420 with David bromo on the wire and they won uh both races ahead of uh former Series winner and winner of pretty much every dingy class you can think of at the moment uh Tom Gillard um in a streer on this occasion with two second places and then the Olympic campaign uh for for Canada in the ilka 7 Ben flow he was in third at the Yorkshire Dales right okay so moving on um as you all know we running a sticker competition with Seldon for the best display of the stickers Seldon were also generous in their support at the uh early entry process and we had uh prizes and uh rewards for those entering more than one and I think we had about 50 vots entering it uh more than one event before drok Dash and we also had a Lucky Draw which is the uh prize bag that uh Richard is kindly modeling there and that was won by Serena okay so the winners of the uh sticker competition this is the best display of a sticker as you sort of see there so for the Draco Dash it was I’ll just run those again it was Dave Barker and his hadron H2 looking very good for the duut ship flyer it would Ben bden and Alice Carter from Yorkshire Dales in their RS 200 for the Brass Monkey it was MIA Hatley and monan and iard in the RS fever all the way from South stash OE Saunders and Zara Frankton um from Shu in the L one at graffam here in shrimpton and Tom parus in the Merlin when at um of Lady Mary Cornell Le Prince from the Craig City Academy one won that uh King George who’s good to see about um eight of the young Lads from Ina out there competing in their old lasers Matt Sargeant and Alice Moore in the 2000 won at the tiger Trophy and um George Vincent and Jack morson from great Mo at um at Oxford okay moving on to the graph from Grand PRI so just a couple of days after the yorkshire’s Brass Monkey it was on to the Gil graffam Grand Prix and still storm Garrett was wreaking havoc in certain parts of the country so would it cause problems for the graffman Grand Prix well almost but not quite and uh full credit to graffam for going ahead again in difficult circumstances now this is the the only event where we don’t have one big combined Fleet we have a fast a medium and a slow and that’s the way it’s been for the past 41 editions of the graffam Grand Prix um so in the fast Fleet guess who won so s Pasco in the Musto skiff beating a NRA 16 s by Will Smith so good to see some multi- hard participation um graffam in the medium handicap well not such a slow boat an RS6 600 sell by George Smith ahead of a 470 sell by Tom Gillard crewed by Aaron hullman so now we’ve seen Aaron Holman helming a 470 helming a 420 and now crewing in a 470 um so very very very um adaptive and versatile Sailing by Aaron Holman and in the slow it was Alistair Brown in the ilka 7 beating Ben flow on this occasion in the ilka 7 with Luke fiser in the RS vario coming in third and the leading Challenger was Graham Hall and Alex hofton was awarded the perseverance prize so uh well done to you Alex I’m not sure what the criteria are for that but again great to see the challenges um turning out on such a regular basis for this series right okay so we now move to some more extracted results we basically uh divide the class types into four different types from uh U fast a symmetrics um through to slow a symmetrics so in the fast a symmetric group it was Dan Vincent in a Musto skiff Sam Barker in a Musto skiff and surprise surprise Sam Pasco I think if your name is Samy say a must is a fair chance you’re going to win something in the first symmetrics we had 63 Ries uh in third place was Will Russell in the RS 600 from graph and water second place was Chris Hatton if you hear your name can you please go and collect your prize over there in the RS 300 from bore and the winner of that group seen this name before Roger Blake in the Osprey okay so slow eight symmetrics we had 78 entries it’s actually a bit of a growth this class so uh in third place was James Davis sorry yeah third place was sorry Ben wayy and Laura Glenn in the RS 200 second was James Davis in the ls of 3000 and the winner was Luke fiser uh in the RS area Okay so moving on to the slow symmetrics this is sort of really everyone else that made 265 entries well over half the entry so I think that’s s shows you where the sort of focus of UK dingy sailing is in that big sort of group so in third place it was Jamie Blake in the IL of s from great Mo second was imagin Wade and Hugo Valentine from drott water and the winner was Ben flow in that group okay so moving on now to the uh the Bloody Mary so Sam Pasco has won pretty much everything he’s turned his hand to but he was only second in the Bloody Mary oh no hang on that was last year’s Bloody Mary no he did actually win this year’s Bloody Mary so F phenomenal um consistency I mean I I thought it was an incredible achievement round that very reachy kind of course that you tend to get at a at a gjw direct Bloody Mary I don’t think it’s easy sailing a boat um like the mustow skiff on on those tight reaches but somehow again San Pasco managed to win this year’s Bloody Mary ahead of Tom Gillard this time sailing a scorpion with Rachel gray and in third it was an 400 sell by Jack Holden and Rob Henderson and we had 185 boats um so again um pretty good turnout we’re not getting back to where it’s been in the past yet but we are definitely going in the right direction so it’s it’s nice to see um The Big Numbers returning this season um we had 52 classes there from 84 sailing clubs and I think the youth numbers there a quarter of them out of the 280 Sal a quarter were youth so that’s also very encouraging right okay so moving now on to extracted class rankings when we say extracted we’re just taking results for those particular classes so again the order may not quite appear so it’s like you’re racing that class um this is for uh classes that get 10 entries plus we saw an increase with 18 the 2000 class managed to round up 10 for Rutland so well done there and uh class chairman Mike mcing and Alex will be take their prize the 420s we saw 24 entries that’s a big growth there imagin and Hugo won that one Ila sevens 33 entries Ben flow Ila sixes Finley Cochran uh top youth top Junior sailor in the ilka 6 won that ilka fours deir soya from uh trop Merlins we had 14 uh entries there Kieran shrimpton and Andrew shrimpton in the uh you might have remember them in that yellow boat winning the picture competition Musto gifts or 11 boats they I think the Musto gifts were using this as a big training session weren’t they are for the worlds Andy yeah we’ve got a worlds coming up at wouth and Portland later on this year and I think that’s that’s partly why we saw them out in such good force it does seem like World Championships and big events Focus the mind yeah yeah so uh s Pasco won that not surprisingly in the Phantoms we had 11 entries and that was Rob cook from Northampton sadium Club thever we saw a good entry of 12 and again we’re looking to encourage the uh those Junior sort of classes that was Mia and uh Mona from South staffs the RS 200 was the biggest class they had 49 entries so very uh competitive class and great to see them out in numbers and that was Ben wayy and Lor Glenn from parkstone Yacht Club RS 300 Chris hatson from F more RS 400s was uh Chris and I think it well Karen LA but I’ve seen pictures of Abigail I think uh he got the whole family out so well done there Chris you win the family prize RS 600 was Will Russell from graph and water RS 800 was Tom Morris we’ve seen them before uh scorpions again good to see uh them coming back in numbers 11 of those uh Dave Wade and Ben Raina from drop I think I’ve seen Dave around solo was uh Chris B from Lady yach Club I think that’s over the East way and the Toppers big entry there we had uh Clive Jackson from Dorchester okay so uh moving on to the King George Gallup uh King George Gallup one of our newer events I think maybe this was uh edition six um really really close finish so close um that initially it looked like like Dan Vincent in a Musto skiff had had won and then it looked like um maybe it was Wen Valentine again in the 420 maybe they had won and then some scoring queries really really close on the tie break between those three um but in the end it was Ben mcgrain and James Ross who won the King George Gallop in an osprey um Ben mcgrain absolutely great sailor won this series before crewing in a 505 uh for Roger Gilbert a couple of seasons ago um so so really really close uh but the King George Gallup again put on a fantastic event this year right okay so moving on to the uh top lady uh award uh again 63 entries is held there been actually numerous Crews um be good to sort of get to par on there but numbers are again increasing so third was Val Millard in the Challenger from Rutland Sailing Club second was Ellie Craig in the RS6 from bassm weight and first was imagin Wade well with Hugo but uh that’s still top lady well done okay so might as well might as well just stay here okay so moving on to round seven the John Merck tiger trophy yeah the tiger Trophy and um well it was it was pretty big one uh Dave Wilkins has been running it for more years than I can remember um it’s the first one that um in 20 years of it I think Dave Hall and Paul constable in their Fireball weren’t able to attend they’ve supported every single one but they were out in Australia um looking to try and win the fireball worlds they did actually manage to to win the warmup rata in a borrowed boat because their boats never arrived in a in a container um and uh in fact I think Britain well Tom Gillard actually managed to win the viable worlds in a in a a borrowed boat because I don’t think he ever managed to get in his anyways sad not to see H and Constable at the tiger trophy but we had 106 entries from 41 different classes that did turn out and uh David I remember you saying it was probably Saturday was probably one of the best days we’ve ever seen for the tiger trophy good medium air conditions pretty mild um really solid racing everyone back a short in time to watch the Six Nations rugby in the evening and enjoy the bangers and mash for the evening dinner and then it was a gnarly Sunday Pursuit race really really Breezy um but uh he was there so of course he he had to win it was s Pasco in the Musto gii um followed by 420 from pelli that’s Arwin Flur and Matthew Raina they won the pursuit race in the really Breezy stuff and it was Dan Vincent who just missed out on winning the King George Gallup where he was third in his Musto gii um so um a really really strong trapeze boat benefit the top 10 top 11 Boats were all high performance classes and it was actually Dave Wade and Ben rer um in the Scorpion from dracott water they were the first non- trapeze boat so uh that that was one for the fast boats okay so moving on to Great Lakes handicapping and pleased to see Andrew Craig and some of the other groups here handicapping is obviously the the key to this and I think Andrew and his group is it 15 years ago Andrew started really sort of really turning handicaps up and giving us some fan Fantastic numbers you want to come up and chat about it Andrew we’d like we’d like to get you up let’s give a big round of applause to Andrew Craig yeah let’s get a Andrew yes I know you want to give credit to uh to other people in um in the uh uh the group The Great Lakes Group soers who are they uh yes so gosh that’s going to put me on the spot we got David Wilkins here uh we’ve got Richard botting we’ve got Bob Carter who is our cat specialist and we’ve got Keith escrit who’s who represents the northern sailing now I know this is this is old news to you and me Andrew but sometimes even the best ideas still take a while to to percolate through so what was what was the impetus and the motivation for forming the Great Lakes Group in the first place well I think the impus was that particularly at the Bloody Mary we noticed that some boats like the laser they never got anywhere we just did an analysis and it was just not right that some boats didn’t even if they were helmed well but of course it wasn’t a very attractive Series so we didn’t have many uh lasers out at that stage but there were also other classes that were legendary if you were in an international 14 if you were in a phantom a Merlin then it was easy cherry picking so we did a bit of analysis for a couple of years without publishing numbers and then we started moving them and when we made our first move it was a big move and if you follow the forums on Ys and yting it was not a popular move with many people but gradually people saw actually this is beginning to work this is producing very good competition you mention often the number of classes in the top 10 top 20 I look at the configurations in particular you’ve been talking about whether you’re in a singlehander a double hander a Spiner no Spiner one trapes two trapes you now stand really an equal chance of winning any of these events and the series if you’re a good sailor right okay well thank you Andrew and uh we don’t uh stand still so on the 26th of March we are running a handicap Forum where really anyone who’s interested in data and big data and that’s be obviously becoming important in our lives are welcome to join Andrew and the team to share ideas and look at really what the future is and I think that the future is exciting round eight Oxford blue yes we must talk about the Oxford blue it was only last Saturday just a just a week ago go and um well surely our Good Run Of Breeze wasn’t going to last all the way through but actually it did it was another really fantastic day absolutely fantastically run by Oxford Sailing Club David Aon and and his team we were on the water uh for the first start at 11:00 three back-to-back races and we were off the water by 2:00 and and the breeze was uh clicking around anywhere between probably six and 18 knots super Gusty I managed to get a clean sweep of one cap size in each of the three races in my Musto skiff thank you very much um but but even even even the undefeatable Invincible s Pasco didn’t man manage to win on this occasion and it was actually Luke fiser in the RS vario who managed to to win this one so congratulations to him um and it was a former Series winner Matt me in a gp14 with Chris Robinson who was second but of course s Pasco couldn’t be fully elbowed off the podium he was still third in the mustow skiff and it was great to see other boats there um like Sam Wy the Olympic campaigner out of his ilka s and and into a wasp um racing on a handicap of 500 um and I mean who who knows maybe one day someone win at that but but Andrew kraan and the team at the Great Lakes will be analyzing those numbers it’s a very dynamic system and we hear that some classes are a bit miffed about the number that they’ve got so they decide to stay away as a boycott which okay I can understand it but actually please do get back involved prove that you’re at the back of the fleet and then we’ll give you a different number or they will I’m not involved in it but but please if you if you think you’ve got an unfair number just go through the short-term pain show us that the number is wrong and and then the Great Lakes will reconsider the handicap number and may maybe give you a better number for The Following season so um please do bear that in mind anyway that was that was season that was uh the end of the season eight fantastic events so sorry I’ve got m one of the themes that we’ve seen we’ve mentioned Matt me he was there training for the gp40 worlds coming the musters their training so a lot of people are using these events as training so we’ve been thinking about how can we sort of uh on that and I’m pleased to welcome back Simon I see Katie there horsefield three times winner who’s going to come and help [Applause] us Simon great to see you back you you with KY won this series uh three on the Trot in the 2000 you you’ve stayed away a couple of years given other people a a chance and now you’re coming back but it sounds like you might be coming back in a in a different role so so what are you thinking about yeah so that’s right so we’re going to come back and uh support uh I’m going to come back and support with coaching so going to do some pre-event uh briefing online uh going to be there at venue taking some video uh in and around with Dy part giving us some advice really and just spreading in as a coach and as a racer I want to help people if I can so I’ll be around to support them really and we perhaps a little bit of postra analysis as well and what’s your day job just give us some context uh so I’m a royal Navy saling manager is my day job and a a part-time Freel lunch coach okay um and uh if if there was one little tip that you could give now for this style of racing um what what’s one thing that really worked for you and Katie to win three back-to-back series the absolute secret to winning this competition is to sail the course not the competitors so how can you avoid the traffic you just sail your own race you’ve got to get around the four boys how do you do it effectively and if it’s a Pursuit race it’s exactly the same strategy so it’s a race against the Clark you forget the the other competitors as much as possible yeah I think people get bogged down with the fact that we’re going to look at there’s 10 arrows so let’s raise the arrows it’s not about that it’s about forgetting where you are ups and downs on the shifts just sail about fast and you’ll be successful and you didn’t get a lot of coaching when you were when you were coming through and when you were growing up what what do you think input from someone like you could how could that make a difference I really wish I had the opportunity to be coached as a child it wasn’t a thing so I was sort like selftaught so for me I really wish I had the opportunity so I think it’s fantastic and me personally I’d love to get coached now so I think coaching always you can’t see it from in the boat sting a rib you can see everything so I think it’s fantastic and I hope I can support people with that and and how has uh the racing during the winter series how how has that impacted on your skills and and your results during the summer I think it just you know you sell all year round and buy you know you finish the Championships in October what do you do well you come and join aund Ro fleets in the sa Joe series against the some of the great Sailors we’ve in the country and it keeps you sharp fit and and what a what a great place to spend your Winters in 35 knots at the tiger trophy or The Bu Murray you know fantastic so well it’s one thing to race it another thing to coach it no one’s done that yet so you’ll be the first and Simon it would be fantastic to have you there providing that support thank you great thanks Andy okay so uh thank you Simon and that actually Segways into the next sort of thing we’re creating some new rankings now what we’ve realized like the RS the Rafa all that sort of uh services and forces there’s a big sort of presence of these people sailing so we’ve been talking and working with that group and we’re going to set up a well forces challenge blue light sort of uh group to uh really give extracted results based around those and I think I saw Mike out there so if you’re interested in getting involved come and see us um right sorry we’re moving ahead of bit so looking at other ranking other initiatives so we’ve seen an influx of old old boats and it was good to see the norfor punt uh the 65y old boats um from uh Edward and Alex from nor broads I don’t know are they here oh there you are so they win our oldest boat prize and uh great great to see them out there and what we’ve realized is uh we want to encourage the old boats out there so Andy and I are going to be doing some work trying to encourage there working with the uh the trade I’m already pleased to announce that Marlo ropes and Ovington have agreed to support us with prizes for the old boats and we look to the old the trade Andy to uh come and help us yes uh the elephant in the room it’s it’s been sitting in the corner of the room for so long maybe we’ve forgotten it’s there but how many boats do we have sitting under Moss Mossy covers all around the country and perfectly good Hardware may maybe not quite enough to win a championship maybe not even good enough to to come top 10 in a championship but probably in the right hands could probably finish somewhere close to the top 10 but those boats are F virtually worthless as they stand at the moment what if we can find a way of actually breathing new life into those old boats uh a bit like the guys have’ done with the uh the 65y old norfor punt I was going to ask their ages actually how old are you guys 17 and suppose 17 34 so so they’re combined ages only add up to pretty much half of the age of the north punt so sort of thinking out loud I’m thinking young Sailors old boats something like that I mean we need more young Sailors and we need more old boats out on the water in my view and and when we’ve floated this idea before for those boats that barely float um people seem to think that it’s a good idea but who’s actually going to make it happen well we’re going to try and make it happen not going to say it’s going to be easy but I I think kicked off by what Andrew Craig and the Great Lakes have achieved already with their handicapping and also what Simon does with the various forms of data analysis that that he uses including his own sale racer GPS tracking it it is possible to come up with more bespoke more customized rankings for older boats and and that’s what we’re looking to do and that’s partly why Richard you said that you were going to renew your sponsorship uh by for a sixth year for this series partly because of what we’re doing with Grassroots have you got anything you want to to say about that particularly or yeah all right well we really appreciate it Richard and it’s really nice to to have a sponsor who’s who’s not just about sticking Mas in brand new boats it’s it’s about supporting the the sport across the board and putting more back into the Grassroots so I just want to say thank you very much to you Richard and to Steve and everyone at seld to that okay so not long to go we’re now into the uh the business cent They say so the uh top 10 so in 10th Place it was the big National 18 with Oliver hman Steve Watton and Jeremy Vines okay in Ninth Place we’ve heard these mentioned before Ben wayy L Glenn in the RS 200 from Park St I I’m just going to say I was rude enough to ask Jeremy his age last weekend I don’t know if I’m allowed to share it but 86 years old sailing a high performance boat and uh I don’t know who our youngest was Simon was it nine was it Jess it was the Jessica in the miracle you might have seen a miracle appeared at Tiger Trophy and then she enjoyed it so much she came all the way from filey to uh Oxford so fantastic nine-year-old helming at times in a miracle so nine yeah last weekend in fact we had AG ages 9 to 86 represented okay so in eighth place it was Ellie Craig in the RS ao6 from Bassam white okay I don’t think’s here so Seventh Place Jamie Blake in the ilka s from great Mo okay in sixth place uh winner of the Oxford blue second uh in previous years was Luke fishes in the RS bario from hempton Park okay in fifth place they came so close to winning the uh King George Gallup imin Wade and Hugo Valentine in the 420 from drot waterer okay in fourth place again TI at uh King George was Dan Vincent in the Musto ski Stokes Bay and rnsa okay in third place and thanks Sam for some of your onp footage I think Sam Barker is here in the must skiff from Castle Cove here he comes so in second second place uh Ben flow was the runner up last year he so nearly won but couldn’t make the ox of blue uh in the Ila seven from painton I don’t think he’s here and the winner no surprises is uh s Pasco from St um from Castle Cove in the must scff well oh we got Megan got a better so this is Sam’s sister Megan Pasco and and um Sam I understand is at a wedding today that he really really wanted a rle out of but couldn’t so yeah he was trying to to get the train and get to London on time but thought he might get divorced if he did that so um he is fully under the thumb but um he was lucky to get out for the six events he did um and really uh love sing the Musto um loves working for me um and yeah I think it’s something that he really sort of I think winning the bloody was one of those things that he’s s of like it’s been going for so long that it’s part of history and you look at the names of that Trophy and is just phenomenal um so yeah thanks to Seldon and thanks to SG for running it um and I’m sure he’s be back next year there we’ve heard we’ve heard the promise but uh will he be able to compete on whatever number he’s given by the Great Lakes we’ll have to see and the well I understand the a numers already published and I think the Musto skiff is is down eight in the charts so it’s going to be a little bit harder for for S Pasco and S Barker and Dan Vincent and all the other top Musto gii sailers next season but that’s as it should be I would also say that this was a very windy um series and I don’t think the traped sailers bent their legs all season so um so it was it was a quick interview can we have the audio off the computer um Andy was able to catch up with Sam at Oxford s Pasco you’ve won the seld and sell juice wind series it it’s been a while coming cuz you’ve absolutely dominated but now it’s confirmed so congratulations what was the the moment where you felt like this might be going your way because you just kept on winning event after event uh after the first couple of events it was all sort of lining up quite well so yeah been and the rest kept coming yeah yeah and uh today at the Oxford blue actually this is one that you didn’t quite manage to win you were third here um and Luke Fischer in the vario uh winning here so I’m thinking that even on the ones that you won it was only by a matter of seconds in in each of the races it looks like a dominant performance across the season but everything is by feet and inches and seconds isn’t it yeah that’s future handicap racing can only be a few seconds but you still get your bullet on the board and what’s brought you out to do this why have you and S Barker being so Keen to do all the events this season uh it sort of lined up last year we nearly won the tiger Trophy and nearly won the Blood Mary so kind of worked out must have had a good handicap and to see what we could do this year right and I suspect that’s going to put you in a pretty good place for the start of the spring season for the open meetings and ultimately the the world championship in the musos gifts in wayth where you live which you haven’t quite won yet you came close last year but I’m I’m thinking this this training over the winter must help doesn’t it y yeah went for a playing with the other day and Boone handling was all nice and sharp so should be in a good place for the oan lands in a month’s time and in uh in March of graffam and we we used to I wi with lards what’s it like taking a Musto ski around all these crazy courses that we do here with all the traffic that we have it certainly made laugh interesting we learned a few techniques and a longer May sheet and a few other things and we had a great time with it it’s certainly never a dull moment getting it down those reaches well Sam you taken it to a new level congratulations and good luck with the season thank you very much thank you and that’s what I love about this series it brings out the best of everything that we’ve got in UK dingy racing there there’s no show like this anywhere else in the rest of the world the r ourway dingy show is unique and and the rest of the world is quite envious of that and I don’t believe we’ve got as diverse a dinghy racing circuit as we see with the Selden s juice winded Series so give yourself a big round of applause have a great 2024 and we’ll see you again this time next year here at the dingy show thank thank [Applause] you
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