THIS year, the total number of all boats competing in the Salcombe Gin-sponsored Salcombe Yacht Club Regatta was a post-Covid record and the recent renaissance of the Salcombe Yawl fleet an astonishing and wondrous sight for competitors and spectators alike, reports Malcolm Mackley.

The weather provided strong and light winds with rain and sunshine in nearly equal measures resulting in a range of very different sailing conditions for all competitors throughout the week.

Kicking the morning starts off with the slow, junior handicap.

SYC provides strong support for juniors and the 21-boat entry in the different subsets was highly competitive. The junior handicap fleet was dominated by Henry Gage and Joshua Brewer in their RS Fever who won every race in their class.

Will Ness in his Topper nearly matched this result but allowed Bella Wilson to take one race. The slow handicap was also included in this fleet and again, first in every race was secured by the father a daughter combination of Mark and Olivia Stockbridge.

The seven competitors in the RS400 fleet was dominated by Figs Cain and Olli Scrimshaw who won nearly all the races but allowed Mike and June Baker the pleasure of winning one.

This year’s highly competitive handicap fleet of 23 entries was packed with diversity and talent. The Jamie Stewart Thames A Rater towered above everybody looking magnificent and this was closely followed by the Ultra National 18 of Michael Wilson.

Past popular Salcombe classes of Enterprises, Larks, Merlins and National 12s were this year included in the Handicap fleet creating formidable competition.

Fran Gifford and Phil Dalby in their Merlin Rocket secured two race wins to win the week overall with recently crowned Hadron National Champion Richard Leftley second, with one race win.

Alistair Conn also with one race win in his full rig ILCA was third overall. Other race wins were secured by the LARKs of Tim Fells and Frankie Burn, and Stuart Hydon and Vicky Hydon.

The emergence of a very healthy, SYC ILCA fleet at Salcombe has been a welcome and exciting development. In the 7-boat ILCA radial fleet Andrew Groves dominated, however Selena King had a great week coming second, with Allan Willcox third.

The near all female ILCA 4.7 fleet attracted 10 entries and was dominated and won by Charlotte Simmonds however, she allowed another up and coming Salcombe sailor Ivy Hart to win one race to secure second overall.

Then, the final race was won by Charlie MacKenzie, who has recently won international success in a Topper, and he secured third place overall in the ILCA 4.7s.

This year, there were over 60 wooden Salcombe Yawls sailing in the Regatta and in the summer, the SYC club line is restricted by a fairway designed to accommodate the busy commercial and holiday boats of all shapes and sizes.

60 Salcombe Yawls starting on one line is impossible and so the massive fleet was divided into four with one fleet starting in the morning. The morning Gold fleet was convincingly won by Robin Piggot and Robert Smith Y123, although they were pushed hard by Emily and Greg Hoar in their funky paint job Y145 with Issy and Andrew Wood Y126 coming third.

Photography by Lucy Burn.