RS200 Class at Papercourt
Papercourt RS200 Open Meeting October 2010
 |
| Our fleet is friendly and welcoming and can help any sailors who want to sail a 200! |
There is a thriving RS200 fleet at Papercourt with around 20 boats now at the club. It’s a modern design with an asymmetric spinnaker making it a quick boat and great fun on the water.
A number of club members are active in the national RS circuit and we are home to some top sailors from the RS fleet, such as Colin Smith and James Boyce. The RS200 turnout for the club competitions has been good and we’re hoping this will improve in 2011, especially as the class continues to grow at Papercourt.
There is a wide mix of skill levels at the club, from those mentioned above to relative newcomers across a range of age groups and the approach is very much “all welcome”! We run a number of winter training sessions and hold an Open Meeting in October.
The fleet is friendly and welcoming and if you’d like to sail a 200, please get in touch either via the email above or the club pigeon holes. Also, if you’re interested in crewing a 200, it would also be great to hear from you as folk (including me!) are often looking for someone to sail with.
Tom Key
News & Recent Results - September 2011
It’s been an excellent summer of sailing at Papercourt, although the winds have been either very strong or very light, making for some exciting sailing if you managed to pick the right days - a number of Papercourt crews made the journey to Itchenor, to find it cancelled because of too much wind! There were also some beautiful conditions for some Wednesday evening cruising as you can see in some of the pictures.
On the national scene, Aaron Smith and Alec Henry did really well in the nationals at Weymouth in August. Finishing 52nd overall, it’s worth noting that this was in a fleet of over 150 boats! They also managed First Youth Helm in the silver fleet. Well done! Sam Tozer crewed to 2nd place in the Rutland Sprints in the early summer and Lucy Preston is currently 9th in the South East Area Series.
At home, we’ve seen a mix of 200s across the race series on Saturdays and Sundays. Jon and Sue are once again near the top in the Sunday pursuit, but a number of others have put in several appearances – it’s always good to have class competition to race against.
Papercourt’s Two Handed Day, earlier this month was one of the windier days. A number of us tried the morning, rather fewer lasting into the afternoon. Well done to Jon and Sue for winning overall and you’ll no doubt have seen the pictures as Clare Whitehill and I went end-over-end in the last race – interesting experience, but overall a really fun day.
The next big event is, of course, the Papercourt RS200 Open Meeting on 16th October. It would be great to see a good turnout from local boats, so please help make the event as successful and enjoyable as last year’s. It’s a real opportunity to try an open meeting for those of you who haven’t before and we should see a number of 200’s from Papercourt and elsewhere racing together. Once again, Guildford Marine is kindly sponsoring some prizes and we’ll have some through the fleet as well as something more serious for the podium places.
Looking further ahead, as I write, the winter training programme is just being put together. There are 2 days for RS200 coaching, on 3rd December 2011 and 25th February 2012. These days are very much for us to use as we wish and we will have some great coaching available on both days. Please do let me know if there’s anything you’d like these to cover which can include anything from starting practice or sailing with spinnakers through to advanced boat settings.
Finally, I’m aware there are a number of newer members to the fleet – I hope I have managed to meet you all, but if not, please do get in touch or come and introduce yourself at the club. The same applies if you’re not currently on my email list, so please let me know if you’d like to be added to that.
In the meantime, please do come and make the most of the remaining summer days, whether that be the weekend race series, the class Open Meeting on 16th October or the Club Championship on 22nd October.
I look forward to seeing you on the water!
Tom
RS200 483 RamShackle
