Papercourt Sailors at the Optimist Winter Championships
A large contingent of Papercourt sailors made the trip to Datchet Water over the weekend of the 28/29th November for the Optimist Winter Championships. The 13 Papercourt Sailors faced an extremely challenging two days sailing in winds Force 3 to 7 with rain, squalls and lightening as well. After the first days sailing the 171 sailors were split into two fleets of roughly 85 boats with the top 85 sailing as a Gold Fleet on Sunday and the next 85 boats as the Silver fleet.
Four Papercourt sailors made the Gold fleet with Murray Hampshire 32nd, Amy Jenkins 77nd, Jessy Hammett 81st and Freddie Verburgt 83rd. For Amy, Jessy and Freddie this was the first time in the Gold fleet at an IOCA event.
Of the 9 Papercourt Sailors in the Silver fleet Hattie Lucas-Clements led the way with 6 race finishes and 19th overall. James Scott and Jamie Smith were 23rd and 27th respectively both getting top 10 results on Sunday. Will Birchall was 31st impressively finishing all 6 races. Robert Masterman was 33rd overall in the Silver fleet with a 2nd in the last race after recovering from a recent broken leg. Oscar Wright was 46th, James Cook 56th and David Brand 66th.
All sailors did extremely well to sail in such challenging conditions.
