Abersoch Keelboat Week 2024
by Mike Crompton 30 Aug 10:35 UTC
19-23 August 2024
The annual Abersoch Keelboat Week is a bold mix of serious racing for the 38 entries but also some legendary parties. Junction 12 provided the music for Friday night after a very generous prize-giving supported by our main sponsor One Sails.
The South Caernarvonshire Yacht Club celebrated 100 years of racing and the numerous events during the summer included a popular Pursuit race in June and some inter class team racing in Squibs for the Shootout trophy in early August. Winners of the pursuit race were the Dragons and the dinghy fleet won the team racing beating a Squib team in the final.
Abersoch Keelboat Week started with sunny conditions and 12-14 knots for the practice race on Sunday 18th August.
The race officer for the day Malcolm Blackburn set a great course so that everyone could get their boat handling skills honed to perfection.
Winners of this race included Xpletive IRC 2 and Only Magic White Sails who both went on to win the overall fleet prizes.
The forecasts looked ominously windy for the rest of the week and apart from one day when we gave in to the conditions and spent a leisurely day relaxing and an impromptu prize-giving and music quiz in the bar.
The fleets battled with strong winds every day regularly 25 knots which was at the upper limit for most and in fact the small keel boats Pandora's and Beneteau 21's only completed two races all week.
The race officers and mark layers stuck to their task and they managed to start 8 races for all the other fleets although on Thursday after a very delayed start by a huge Spring tide and swell delayed racing until later in the day and consequently some boats were only coming ashore at 19.30. A huge debt of gratitude to all the launch crews, led by Bosun Dom Baldwin who ensured safe return of al the crews.
The presentation to all the young launch team at prize-giving was a heartfelt and genuine standing ovation!
So overall in IRC 1 the battle between Impetuous,Car Gods and Jackpot was fierce after Mojito dropped out to prepare for the upcoming ISORA race. The most spectacular sailing came from these bigger boats with some great examples of how to sail in high winds by Sam and Andrew Hall's Jack knife and perhaps slightly unluckily for Car Gods that they suffered gear failure on the last day.
Impetuous the Corby 37 of Miller,Hodges,Crompton had some great races and some less so but overall they emerged as winners with Jackpot David Lean 2nd and Car Gods Atkinson and Schofield 3rd.
IRC 2 was won by Xpletive with 7 race wins and a 2nd this crew consists of some seriously old timers that started racing together in 2004.
2nd place Quattro Dave Eddowes a newly purchased Beneteau 31.7 sailed by a strong team steadily improved as the week went on and the new One Sails were obviously working well for them.
3rd Only Just a J105 is another new boat for Ian Macmillan and team who are very good in the bar and on the race track. They were awarded the race officers special prize for seamanship as they were the only boat to fly a spinnaker on the 2nd race on Wednesday with regular 30 knot gusts.
Finally the White sails fleet was again dominated by a well set up J97e Only Magic Wim Batist who won every race. 2nd was Marauder a Sigma 33 sailed by Tim Saunders and 3rd Crud y Awel Peter Driver.
Special mention must go to Crackajak a 40.7 sailed double handed by visitors Geoff Dutton-Kelly winners of the best visiting boat finishing 4th in White sails fleet.
A small Westerly Konsort Duo Lillebolero from Liverpool YC competed in every race and sailed over from Pwllheli marina after staying on board. Well done Alistair Roaf we hope to see you again.
So many people make an event like this work well and perhaps the Centenary medals and Champagne goes some way to thank all the SCYC members involved for helping out.
Finally another big thank you to our main Sponsor One Sails who set up a mobile sail loft for all sail repairs during the event but quite frankly even with all the big winds they were relatively quiet and not over stretched with work.
The trophy table was also laden with their bags belts sunglasses and caps that went down extremely well with all the winners.
Other sponsors were Ben Miller Champagne, Ben Hodges, Sun God Sunglasses and English Braids vouchers for main sheet and halyard.
Next year's event will be from Sunday 17th August to Friday 22nd August.2025.
NoR and Entry Forms online from end January.
www.scyc.co.uk