A meagre three phantoms made the journey to Bassenthwaite over the weekend of 15 &16 May and boy did you all miss out. Bright sunshine, ood winds and camping 100 metres from the bar door (downhill), to top it all Stella even made an appearance. The phantoms that did make he trip including Dermot Morrow all the way from Northern Ireland joined the fast handicap fleet in Bassenthwaite sailing clubs annual andicap open. During the first race Andrew Elliott managed to get away chased by Colin Barrie with Dermot locked in his own private battle with the Lasers. Elliott won the race with Barrie closing towards the end of what was a very long race where Barrie by his own admission needed merely to hang the lard over the edge. Overall honours were taken by a GP14.
Race 2 started after a very civilised break for lunch, revitalised Elliott decided that he ought to get on with it and took overall honours with Barrie second and Morrow third. The club laid on a great evening with Stella making a welcome appearance and the club ending out for Pizza from the local supplier, the pool table was wheeled out and Barrie was finally able to show his true form winning the second game of Killer in convincing style.
Sunday started with absolutely no wind however by 11am the breeze had filled in and the fleet launched, in ideal phantom conditions lliott took the overall win with Barrie well placed for a second overall untill the wind turned off as he approached the finish thus finishing third overall on handicap and second Phantom. With the phantom places already decided and the two phantoms of Elliott and Barrie well placed in the overall fleet the GP14 had to win to take the overall event. Following a big windshift before the start Elliott got the first beat badly wrong and founfd the GP14 ahead for the first three legs, unsure of what to do he then proceeded to slow down the GP14 while willing Barrie on to win the race after 90 minutes of enthralling manoeuvres the result was too close to call and the sailors had to wait for the published results to judge the outcome, the final analysis being a win to a RS400 from the GP14 by 5 seconds handing the event to Elliott
Phantom Results
1st Andrew Elliott 1169
2nd Colin Barrie 1117
3rd Dermot Morrow 1069