Minima Regatta 2022
by John Forbes 4 Sep 2022 22:40 PDT
3-4 September 2022
A good hiking breeze for the single handers at the Minima Regatta 2022 © Rehanna Neky
Blow the wind Southerly, and plenty of it, the song should have gone. Minima's 2022 regatta, sponsored by TWM Solicitors for the 15th consecutive year, celebrated a cracking weekend of sailing with the absolute perfect wind.
On the north south reach the Kingston upon Thames club suffers from the prevailing south westerly looping over tall trees and generating swirling and tricky conditions, which river sailors are supposed to love. Of course we don't have much choice.
But at the weekend we had two glorious days of a pretty solid southerly, mostly around force 3, which made for fantastic racing. Minima runs five races over the weekend, and with a good hiking breeze by the end we all felt the benefit in our abdominal muscles.
There were 24 boats, in line with recent years, with welcome visitors from the neighbours up and down river, Tamesis, Thames and Twickenham.
Enterprises and Lasers are now the dominant classes, with seven boats in each. The Merlins were sadly down to two, and there were four Solos. To even up the numbers on a start line that provided plenty of excitement the double handers were sent off 10 minutes before the single-handers.
It's a fairly narrow river at the Minima start line, and there were some good moments, best of all in the second race on Saturday when a hapless party out on a picnic in a hire boat were faced with the fleet of Ents and Merlins lined up hull to hull going at pretty well full chat right after their start. Mayhem ensued when the hire boat went full astern, presenting a moving obstruction for the pumped up competitors. I'm not really sure where you find that in the racing rules, but there was no damage, and the incident slightly favoured those late off the line who had time to steer round the resulting schemozzle.
Minima Commodore Robin Broomfield, and his crew Rear Commodore Paul Bloomfield pulled rank on the Ents with four straight wins, however young guns Ed Mayley and James Budden gave them a run for their money and the results disguise some really close racing, and it was the same story down the fleet: in fact a very few minutes separated first from last finisher.
In the Lasers the home club's Jan Cihak took three firsts, losing one race to Tammy veteran James Hamilton, who brought his boat under both the Kingston bridges to join the fun, a feat in itself. Minima's Ed Cubitt took four second places, clearly a force to be reckoned with, as he was only able to get back on the water a couple of weeks ago.
It was the sort of weekend when you would do all five races even if you didn't have to, and Twickenham's Nick Titley did just that, winning all five to regain the Solo trophy he won in 2019 and 2020.
Nick Armfield lost the first Merlin race on Saturday to Minima clubmate Denis Lockwood, but then won the rest to take the trophy. His boat took a serious dent from a collision with an Enterprise in the second race on Sunday, but still won the last race in style, smothered in black tape.
The Handicap fleet of four was won by Chris Martin of Thames SC in his one-off Keith Callaghan-designed Heatwave, which added a touch of sophistication to proceedings, being entirely unique.
And Laser novice Paul Southall took the new sailors race, an excellent Minima innovation, from his wife Frances in a Topper and Jon Fray's Solo. Paul, nothing if not versatile, also won the men's kayak sprint, while Erica Bishop took the women's prize.
Kingston Mayor, Councillor Yogan Yoganathan, presented the prizes.
Overall Results: (Minima unless stated)
Enterprise
1 Robin Broomfield and Paul Bloomfield
2 Ed Mayley and James Budden
Handicap
1 Heatwave, Chris Martin (Thames SC)
2 Nick John (National 12)
Laser
1 Jan Cihak
2 James Hamilton (Tamesis)
Merlin Rocket
1 Nick Armfield and Jacqui Fry
Solo
1 Nick Titley (Twickenham)
2 Andy Banks
New Sailors
1 Paul Southall
Kayak sprint
Women: Erica Bishop
Men: Paul Southall