Speed Championships - 2019
12 October 2019
Speedsailing competition doesn’t get any better than this!
Weymouth Speed week has been the host for the UKWA Speed Championships since 2006 and for the last 4 years has been sponsored by Hey Dude Shoes UK who supply the trophies and prizes for the event. We have never had such a great week for wind, number of rounds, and very, very close racing.
35 UKWA competitors, 6 days of relentless winds, 12 X half-day rounds were completed to decide the winners. In the end the top four were only separated by less than 8 points and 2nd 3rd and 4th separated by less than 2 points!
The qualifying rounds started on the Sunday after a light wind-opening day. The early leader was Simon Pettifer and held it for two days but going in to day three the youngsters were after him. Local Weymouth youngster Scotty Stallman, was only 0.1 point behind him and 21 year old Yorkshireman James Battye 2 points behind Scotty. Also the very experienced Speed sailor Jim Crossley was clocking some amazing speeds. The writing was on the wall.
By Wednesday, Scotty had taken the lead and James was hunting down Simon. The winds were getting stronger and changing direction allowing for a beach course along the Causeway and faster speeds. To show how hard they ere trying, Simon, Scotty, Jim and James all managed to take the fastest of the day WSW Glass tankards during the week.
The forecast for Thursday and Friday was looking awesome, with a port, broad course along the beach. This allowed Scott’s local experience to start to dominate the event with multiple first places to take the overall win and James’s fitness and winter slalom racing experience allowed him to overtake the older, battle weary Simon and pushed him into 3rd place. Speeds were truly amazing over the historic 500m course with local (Non UKWA member) Pete Young achieving 38.01 knots, Jim Crossley who finished 4th in the UKWA fleet at 37.84 and Scotty at 37.64 knots.
Jenna Gibson lead the women’s fleet ahead of Katharine Skinner and broke Zara Davis’s long held speed for the event with an incredible speed of 34.15 knots over 500m. Multiple winner of the UKWA speed crown, Zara Davis was unfortunately unable to take part due to injury but was the 1st to congratulate Jenna on her achievement.
What an event! Well done to all the sailors who all deserve a big pat on the back for getting out there in storm force winds and sooooo many PBs achieved.
Big thanks to Michael George who not only came 7th overall, but managed to collate these results for us at the end of each day.
The link to the full results.