National 18 Champsionship 2008
The 2008 National 18 Class Championship (3-8 August) was hosted by the Royal Findhorn Yacht Club with the generous sponsorship of Benromach.
The 3 Manx entries in the 24-boat fleet, including 8 from Cork Harbour, 3 from England and 10 locals, regularly attend the annual event, which currently rotates round four venues: Findhorn, Portland, Port St Mary and Crosshaven.
Crossfire (303) was sailed by Antony Ellis, Nige Collins and Luke Collins, Miss D’Meanour (305) by Pete Barlow, Tony Randle and Rob Cowell and Gorrum (332) by Mick Kneale, Phil Hardisty and Donald Edwards.
Conditions were mostly light and variable winds, showery one day and sunny the next. Thursday there was a decent breeze but the fleet couldn’t get out to sea through the shallow bottleneck entrance to Findhorn Bay. The onshore north-easterly wind raised breakers over the bar and it was deemed too risky, especially as a couple of days earlier a local boat had been rolled in the surf and broken its mast – and that was a quiet day!
Antony and crew started the week strongly, winning the Whitford Cup for races 3 and 4 . Mick and crew had a patchy performance but always scored single figure places. Pete and crew had a reasonable week except for missing a result as their new jib was ripped before the start of race 4. Only 8 races were sailed out of the 10 scheduled, as the Thursday was lost.
Manx race placings were as follows:
303 Crossfire: 11, 8, 1, 3, 7, 5, 7, 15. 305 Miss D’Meanour: 18, 14, 19, 25, 15, 10, 16, 14. 332 Gorrum: 7, 9, 3, 9, 3, 3, 2, 7.
The event was won by Cork sailors Colin Chapman, Martin Almond and Morgan O’Sullivan on 370 Aquaholics, with a scoreline of: 2, 3, 2, 6, 1, 1, 4, 1 – who also won the crown in 2004 and 2006.
Overall top ten:
1st Aquaholics (Royal Cork), 2nd Happy Days (Monkstown), 3rd Muchadoo (Royal Cork), 4th Jafiica (Royal Findhorn), 5th Gorrum (IOM), 6th Das Boot (Royal Cork), 7th Crossfire (IOM), 8th Don’t Worry (Royal Findhorn) 9th Hat Trick (Royal Cork), 10th Rhapsody (Tamesis), plus 17th Miss D’Meanour (IOM)