From the Publicity Officer's desk with contributions gratefully received from some of the competitors.

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The 2006 Solo Inland Championships in the 50^th Anniversary year of the class were held over the weekend of 17/18^th June at RutlandSC and was generously sponsored by Pinnell & Bax.

The weekend began with a training day on the Friday, led by Cathy Foster with a number of the Class Coaches in support. 35 trainees attended the day and couldn’t wait to practice their new skills in the weekend’s racing.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny but only a zephyr of air on the lake, as the car park rapidly filled the question was how many Solo’s would turn up for this year’s event? Would last year’s entry of 109 be beaten? As the final competitor entered, the list showed an amazing 113 entries! With competitors travelling from the UK, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Bermuda and New Zealand, you might have thought it was a World’s event.

With the competitors ready to go, the only thing that they were left waiting for was the wind - the PRO Ralph Tingle was out on the water checking to see if the required 3 knots to allow a start was there. At 15:30 no breeze had appeared and racing was cancelled for the day. With no racing the competitors were restless, so a 5-a-side Football tournament was quickly organised with teams representing the areas from Scotland, Western, Midlands, Northern, Thames Valley, Eastern, Southern and the Rutland SC Catering team (aka Rutland Rangers). The referee was keen to show the red card to Steve “Shorts” Dennison for his brightly coloured shorts but someone provided the ref with some sunglasses and the games commenced. The competition was fierce in the knock-out rounds, but it was the Western and Northern Area teams that made the final - with some of the players now suffering in the heat, the final score was 3-0 to the Western team who were each rewarded with a pint from the bar.

There was more to come on the Saturday evening, with a hog and beef roast provided by Rutland Catering Team with live music from “Fidgety Feet”. However the main event of the evening was the draw for Solo 5000 which was displayed on the veranda - there was much anticipation amongst the Solo members present as the winning ticket was drawn……the winner was announced as Jim Prior from Maidenhead SC who wasn’t at the event but was telephoned to let him know that he’d won this fantastic prize. Solo 5000 was delivered to Jim on Monday and has aptly been re-named “Lucky Jim”.

Sunday dawned bright with some early breeze building to a good force 3 with racing scheduled to start at 10.30.

For race 1, the pin end on the start proved to be favourable with Norman Byrd taking the lead at the 1st windward mark followed by Dan Goodman and Simon Corper. The following laps saw some minor place changing, but on the final beat Tjebbe Swart went hard left to overtake Byrd and take the win. Alister Morley worked his way up from around 15th at the first mark and on the final beat went hard right picked up a lift on starboard which saw him pick up 6 places to claim an important fourth.

Race 2 began with a general recall when certain individuals started a minute early and others followed until called back. With a shift to the left increasing just before the start, the difficult decision was required how to start and take the first shift to the right. Morley started in the middle of the line. Steve Cockerill started on port and Chris Brown managed to tack early together with Paul Childs so when they rounded the first mark it was Childs, Morley & Cockerill. The last beat saw some serious place changing: Childs, Morley & Cockerill played the right to find that the wind went hard left again leaving Cockerill in a close battle for 2^nd with Chris Brown and Morley losing two places to Brown and Robbie Wilson but Childs held on to win.

Race 3 - Following some fluky wind shifts that led to one start being aborted with seconds to go to the gun, when the breeze settled again, the fleet got away with Robbie Wilson going hard left for a good lead around first mark from Morley, closely followed by Andy Davies and Alan Bowler. On the second beat Robbie went hard left again and lost his lead to Morley who went up the middle. Kevan Gibb went to the right and gained 5 places to 3^rd with Childs 4^th. On the last beat those who went left ran out of wind with Morley covering Wilson and Gibb holding off the chasing group to hold 3rd place while Chris Brown gained 8 places to snatch 4th on the line by sailing the shifts up the middle.

Morley’s win was enough to give him the title on countback from the ever consistent Chris Brown as, with only 3 races sailed out of the 4 race schedule there was no discard.

The prizes sponsored by Pinnell & Bax were awarded to every 10^th position outside of the main prizes, so even the competitor in 100^th place didn’t go home empty handed. It was nice to see Solo No 2 racing again and finishing a respectable 53^rd.

Thanks to Dinghy Sailing Magazine for the goody bags, the suncream was a definite hit on Saturday.

Final thanks go to the team at Rutland Water SC for hosting a superb event.

Plate Series Winner - Mark Lee - 4606 - SpinnakerSC

Veteran - Tjebbe Swart - NED545 - De Koenen

Grand Master - Alan Bowler - 4200 - BartleySC

Junior - Paul Childs - 4687 - GrafhamSC

Lady - Brenda Hoult - 4525 - Bartley