Revolutionaire Mark Ingram – A BSA Warrior

Mark Ingram is well known amongst the Slalom warriors as one of the UK’s best Amateur racers. Mark’s weapon of choice is of course the Severne Reflex matched to Fanatic Falcon boards. We have teamed up with him to keep you guys up to date with his progress on the UK BSA series for 2016 – Here’s his first event report…..

BSA Slalom 1: Weymouth

The first event of the season kicked off at the National Sailing Academy in Weymouth, hosted by Tris Best at the OTC. It was an easy start to the season (physically anyway). Light winds on day 1 meant that only a few fun races took place. The wind was tantalisingly close to enabling full on racing, but it wasn’t to be.

Day 2 started the same way as day 1 but by 2:30pm the wind was steadily building. By 3pm we had racing conditions. Game on! This meant we only had a very small window to complete a round of races, with qualifying heats and winners and losers finals to be completed by both Amateur and Professional fleets. The race crewe did an excellent job in setting a compact downwind 3 buoy course to enable quick turn around of the heats and finals. 

I was drawn in the second of the Amateur heats. I made a reasonable start and managed to stay out of trouble at the first gybe mark where the normal congestion can ruin your qualifying chances. I made it through to the final.

We waited for the Pros to finish their finals and then it was our turn. I choose my line further downwind of the committee boat since the start line gave some reduced distance to the first mark, but I could suffer dirty wind from the upwind sailors if my start wasn’t right. I got my start absolutely spot on (for a change!!) only to find we had a recall due to some sailors crossing the line too early. Okay, take two !! Only this time my start wasn’t as good. I suffered from some of the dirty wind on the course being lower down then everyone else, but I hung in there. I must have jumped about 3 places on the first mark and found myself in 4th. Now to catch the others. Some ground was gained but it wasn’t enough. So settling for 4th overall and 1st in the Masters fleet, I have to say I was happy with that, and not to be further down the fleet. One round is always going to be a lottery for a lot of people based on the kit choice and racing decisions they make. Certainly the Severne Reflex 6 8.6 combined with the Patrik 115 Slalom gave me good speed round the course. Just got to improve on consistent race starts and the rest 🙂

Mark Ingram, GBR688

Categorised in: Blog, News

This post was written by Neil Greentree (Team Rider)