Al Clark, Royal Vancouver YC sailing coach and long-time Laser sailor, won the Standard Rig/Masters (aged 45-55) class at the Laser Master Worlds in Oman last week. Clark had a series-long battle with Arnoud Hummel of the Netherlands. From the Worlds web site:
“The battle between Al Clark of Canada and Arnoud Hummel of Nederlands went down to the wire as expected but it was Clark who emerged from the scrum at the bottom mark with the glint of silverware in his sights.
“It was so close that I had to write down and memorise all the mathematical possibilities,” he said.
“Fourth or worse for him meant I would win because my discard was five. At the final mark, I touched his boat so had to do a double penalty turn then I watched him finish and counted the boats ahead of him and there were five. It was pretty stressful.”
There were many other notable finishes. Bob Britten of Victoria was fifth in the Grand Master (55-65) class. Jay Winberg, Walt Spevak and Robert Hodson all had strong finishes in their respective classes.
Vanessa Dudley happily dishing it out to the Radial Masters class in Oman.
To few people’s surprise, Peter Seidenberg won the Great Grandmasters Radial class despite being nearly the oldest in the fleet.
But perhaps the greatest win was in the Radial Masters Class where Vanessa Dudley of Australia won after a pitched battle with Bruce Martinson of the United States. The Radial Rig has proven time and time again to create interesting and eclectic mixed-gender and mixed-size fleets.
