GARDEN ROUTE NEWS - A large fleet of 119 dinghies sailed at Mossel Bay over 3 days when the red-sailed Mirror dinghies were sailing their class National Championships and the rest were sailing in the Eastern Cape Championships.
Local sailors were prominent in most of the races with some victories that were achieved.

On Saturday, four races were completed in cool to cold conditions with a fresh south westerly prevailing.
Early on Sunday morning a cold front went past, bringing strong wind and rain. The fleet was kept ashore all morning.
In the afternoon one race was completed in a dying wind.

On Monday conditions were much more pleasant with some sunshine. A South Easter picked up to allow two more races to be completed for a total of seven races and one discard.

The Mirrors, sailing their National Championships, had a good fleet of 22 boats.
For several years, this event has been won by various members of the Robinson family from Carletonville - Ricky, Brennan and Ryan. This year proved to be no different when the team of Katherine and Ryan Robinson got through on the last day to clinch the trophy and gold medals.

GLYC's best position was Cundell Statt and Scooter in 4th place.

The Tera class had a huge fleet of boats - 31 Tera Sports and three Tera Pros.
Entrants came from Durban, PE, Cape Town and GLYC.

Once again there was close competition between GLYC's James Hellstrom and Nathan Page for the gold medal. After 7 races and a discard both ended up tied on points for first place.

But there can be only one winner and Sailing's tie break system gave the top spot to Page.
GLYC's Georgou Divaris was fourth in the Tera Sport fleet.

Jedd Page persevered through seasickness to complete the races.
The other class to have a good entry was, as usual, Optimist, with 25 entrants.

Cape Town boats dominated the front end of this fleet with Emil Feuillette being the winner.
The local sailor with the best placing was Jonathan Rees, sailing for KYC, in 5th place.

There was a smallish Laser fleet, most of which were Radials. The Laser standards and 4.7's were scored together. In this competition GLYC's John Marc Olivier was in first place, ahead of MBYBC's Hansie von Schuts.
The Dabchicks had a competitive fleet of 11 boats, mostly from Cape Town.

GLYC’s sole entrant was Jayan Smart who finished 7th.

The open class comprised four Fireballs (3 from GLYC), a 505 (David Shilton), a Sonnet, a Finn and 5 420's.
First in this class was the Redhouse 420 team of Eben and Johan Vivier, tied on points with the GLYC Fireball team of Anthony Parker and Ferdinand Holm.

The second placed 420 team was sailed by Rosey Finn and Heidi Burger.


The Mirror fleet setting off for a race in their National Championships.