Saga Trophy 2025, 2nd race, 8th May 2025
Published 01:00 on 12 May 2025
Image by Chris Wade
The second Thursday in the 2025 Saga Trophy produced a beautiful evening's racing, with sunshine and a good northeasterly wind giving a beat downstream and a run upstream. OOD David Baker decided to throw in a dogleg to make life interesting.
Despite the good conditions a compact fleet of 7 boats, a single Merlin Rocket, 3 ILCA7s and 3 N18s came to the starting line.
As per last week, the Merlin Rocket, this time Andromeda helmed by Charlie Morgan and crewed by Tim Ginn, took the lead from the start and retained it until the end. Behind them however there was very close racing in both the ILCA7 fleet and N18s.
In the former, Marcus initially held 2nd in the race before being overtaken at the end of the second lap by Peter Impey. This was not to last as Marcus retook the ILCA7 lead and maintained it to the end, crossing the line in 2nd place in the overall race.
In the N18s Alison Cooper crewed by Marie Wilson Dong were the initial leaders, but Charles Fox and Robert Blakebrough pulled through to lead the N18 fleet and finish in a dead heat with Peter Impey in the ILCA7 for 3rd place at the finish. Chris Pollard crewed by Caroline Stilwell just managed to edge ahead of Alison and Marie at the end, finishing a mere 2 seconds in front of them.
Once the handicaps had been applied, Charlie and Tim saved their time in the Merlin Rocket and won. The next 3 places were taken by the ILCA7s, Marcus in 2nd, Peter Impey in 3rd and Alexey Anaskiy in 4th, with the N18s of Charles and Robert followed by Chris Pollard and Caroline Stilwell in Antedote and then Alison Cooper and Marie Wilson Dong in Zephyr
Thanks to David Baker for officiating as OOD, assisted by ace/ patrol team Jim Green, Valerie Rutter, Maurice Joseph and Matt Peregrine-Jones.
Jean-michel and his team served very tasty supper of Seared Salmon with a buerre blanc sauce followed by apple crumble.
Last updated 17:21 on 12 May 2025