After a Saturday that saw the yachts slowly make their way to Jersey in the Carey Olsen inter-insular regatta and left the juniors stranded on shore with no wind, this Sunday morning offered a nice, light northerly breeze and the young Optimist, RS Feva and Laser sailors took to the waters to compete in the PKF Junior Regatta and the Admiral Robson Trophy.

In the first race of the PKF Regatta which also incorporated the Admiral Robson Trophy handicap race, Sam Van de Velde in his Laser Radial took charge followed by the RS Fevas with Adam Goddard and Hannah Rickards and Abigail Tanguy, for the day with David Sidebottom up front. Among the Optimists, Johanna Asplund established a clear lead early on. Behind her, in the challenging tides a number of sailors shifted positions but towards the end Clementine Thompson managed to pull ahead and secure second place followed by Poppy Rickards in third.

After the handicap adjustments, the results saw Johanna in her Optimist take first place in the Admiral Robson Trophy followed by Sam in the Laser Radial and Adam and Hannah in their Feva in third, all showing the handicap system worked well!

The remaining two races of the PKF Regatta offered separate starts with the RS Fevas and the Laser going first and the Optimists five minutes later. In the light, patchy winds and strong, challenging tides, Adam and Hannah continued their great day winning all races in the RS Feva class after intense match-racing with Abigail and David.

In the Optimist class, Johanna took two more bullets and secured overall victory in her last Optimist event on home waters. In the tight battle for second, Poppy came out on top with consistent sailing where she made her way up the fleet in each race to complete a trio of third places on the day. Poppy was closely followed by Sam Crosby in third, Tom Lees in fourth and Clementine in fifth. And only three points separated the four!

As on so many occasions this year, a number of the youngest sailors also pulled together great performances, this time with Eloise Tanguy leading the charge in sixth place overall. In the second race, Eloise even put in a challenge for the race win.

“I went left to stay out of the tide and managed to get a good lift towards the top end of the second beat taking me to a top position around the windward mark”, says 10-year old Eloise and continues: “With the light winds and strong tide you have to get the tides right and my strategy paid off.”

Eloise held on to her position down the run but unfortunately ended up in a protest situation at the leeward mark and doing her penalty turns she lost a couple of places.

“I am not sure I was in the wrong but with no discards in the series I didn’t want to risk a disqualification so I decided to play it safe and do my turns”, she says. “And I am happy with how I sailed, and with my decision.”

Whilst Johanna shortly is off to Poland for the European Championships and Clementine travels to Belgium for the Topsport Vlaanderen Regatta, their Optimist teammates will go through intensive training ahead of the Club Championships in mid July and the Volvo Musto Optimist British National and Open Championship in Weymouth later in the month.

“We will train in the afternoons this coming week”, says Eloise. “I will try to get as many hours on the water as possible before going to Weymouth. It will be my first Nationals and I will make sure to come well prepared.”

At Nationals Eloise will be one of some ten Guernsey sailors competing in the main and regatta fleet classes. Eloise will be in the regatta racing fleet which most likely will see close to 100 boats on the start line. 

Photos (from the top): For the second year running, Adam Goddard and Hannah Rickards took top spot in the RS Feva class in the PKF regatta. They also took third place in the Admiral Robson Trophy; Eloise Tanguy in Monkey Business, one of many young and coming Optimist sailors.