Gill Race Team members triumph at Dutch Easter Regatta

Date Posted: 07/04/2010

Gill Race Team members Scott Wallis and Sarah Norbury were among the 40 British Optimist sailors that descended on Braassemermeer to compete against a 230 strong invitational fleet.

Individual race wins were notched up by Scott Wallis. Consistency and avoiding the black flag was the key to success and by Sunday night when the fleet were split into Gold, Silver and Bronze for the finals, Team GBR were in good shape with Scott leading the pack.

Two gold fleet races were held in 6- 13 knots, with some quite large shifts and pressure differences across the race course, which made the racing challenging. The first gold fleet race was a nervy affair, general recall on a blue peter followed by a black flag start. Scott Wallis was 8th by the last leeward mark, but his nearest rival, German Fabian Graf sailed a perfect race to score a bullet.

Sarah Norbury, still carrying a black flag from a previous race came a creditable 4th and Scott missed one tricky shift to still lead by 3 points going into the last race.

In the final race, Scott managed a blistering start but was caught by a loss of pressure in the middle of the windward leg. By the last leeward mark he had made up 10 places to sit behind Graf up the last beat. After many tacks and dummy tacks and other shinanigans Graf managed to get a small bunch between him and Scott at the finish to take the title, leaving Scott with a more than delighted second place.

Meanwhile Sarah Norbury managed a 7th which pushed her up to 4th overall and 1st girl.

Our congratulations go out to both Scott and Sarah.