MYA
Footy
National Championship

Saturday 16th May 2015
Report by Peter Jackson
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Once again Watermead Model Boat Club, Aylesbury came up trumps and did an outstanding job of hosting the 2105 MYA Footy National Championship on the gorgeous lake at Watermead. Clive Bardell and his helpers were on site and ready to rock as we arrived.
This year we took the Abington Park MYC buoy deployment system with us to the event and deployed the marks with the electric boat. The course was a simple upwind to mark 1 to port, downwind gate then port round wing mark  2 set to the left of 1 and slightly shorter, gate then finish.
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The visitors from Frensham Pond MYG, Keith Parrott (31, ICE) and Graham Whitehead (24, ICE) had obviously been putting in some practice before the event and it showed in their general handling of their boats in what was a tricky stiff breeze blowing into a large bay, although ultimately a bit more practice will be needed to be up with the Midlands skippers who currently competetively race at least two times a month!

As is usual within the Footy class the racing was conducted in a gentlemanly fashion with all competitors following the rules to a tee. David Wilkinson (46) with his Breithorn was struggling with dead batteries and a sail servo which was objecting strongly throughout racing, however he persevered until the end of sixteen races.
Geoff Raygada won a race in race ten and started to pick up and improve his position, eventually winning the Novice Trophy.
The top three were fighting it out, Mike Ewart (36, ICE) was the leader at the lunch break by one point from Rob Vice (84, ICE) these two being closely backed up by Peter Jackson (30, Fat Boy Slim), After the break, Rob Vice and Mike Ewart exchanged places and Rob then consolidated his first place with a string of victories in the last three races, eventually the winner by just two points from Mike Ewart with Peter Jackson trailing a bit behind, hampered by his inability to make a decent start.
The standard at the top of the Footy class just keeps getting stronger with more skippers in the mix and with sailing standards improving year on year it now only takes  a minor error and your target man has slipped by.
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