On Sunday September 24th the Southern Area Straight Running Championship finals were held at Welwyn Garden City. It was a lovely warm day with just a light breeze across the top of the course and as normal for this time of the year some leaves on the surface to add a bit of difficulty for the competitors.

The format of the Championships is as follows:
There are a set number of regattas to count towards the Championships. This year we had five plus the final and these were, St.Albans, Victoria, The Grand, Blackheath and Welwyn.
At each of the regattas the score that you achieve on the day is taken forward to the next regatta and so on with a grand total for the finals where you take away your lowest score over the five regattas, the competitor with the highest total score in each of the classes is the Champion for the year.
The total number of competitors during the season in each of the classes was:
Wedge 12, Scale Boats 6, Scale Ships 7, Functional 10, and One Metre 14. The number of competitors was down this year with a total entry of only 6 competitors.

The first event was the One Metre with five competitors but the scoring was low and only 2 boats managed to score : Dean Reynolds with 18 and Don Reynolds with 15.
The next event was for Functional craft again with 5 entries but this time all the competitors scored with the winner Roger Lane scoring 26 and Donna Reynolds scoring 24.
The Scale Ships took to the course and there was only four competing Tony Willett with the winning score of 15 and Dean Reynolds scoring 9.
Scale Boats was the next to go with 4 entries. The winner with a score of 15 was Tony Willett and second was Dean Reynolds with a score of 9.
The last event was for the Wedge Class and there were 5 entries. The winner was Roger Lane with a score of 29 and 2nd was Tony Willett with a score of 28.
These scores were added along with those that had been gained during the season to affirm the Champions in the 5 classes and these are:

One Meter Champion: Dean Reynolds with a total score of 79 2nd Donna Reynolds with 63

Functional Champion: Donna Reynolds with 131 2nd Dean Reynolds with 107

Scale ships Champion: Tony Willett with a total of 114 2nd Dean Reynolds with 107

Scale Boats Champion: Dean Reynolds with at total 121 2nd Tony Willett with 104

Wedge Champion: Roger Lane with 144 2nd Tony Willett with 133.

A very enjoyable championships and final congratulations to the winners.

Fred was a 50 year plus MPBA member and father to MPBA Webmaster Andy Coburn. He began his model boating at Victoria Model Steamboat Club, trying his hand at all disciplines, eventually settling on RC Scale and Functional steering. His all-conquering Oceanic Tug dominated the both the Senior and Junior (With Andy at the controls) Scale Steering competitions in the 70’s and 80’s.

Once Andy got a taste for Multi Racing at VMSC (Limited to 3.5cc due to VMSC lake size), Fred switched to racing and enjoyed some success with his OPS powered SHG Mini Jaguar, but he always returned to VMSC whenever he could.

Fred was a hugely popular figure around the model boating scene. He is sorely missed.