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DF65 & DF95 Social Racing 2024 – 20/3/24

DF65’s

A Northerly, or maybe N. Easterly breeze, for todays DF racing which made a welcome change. Various sailors arrived with the expectation of no sailing as it had been flat calm elsewhere on the Wirral, but in the event the breeze held and very slowly got up to a reasonable A+ rig day.

Twelve skippers showed up today, including a welcome visitor from Gresford. Welcome to Gautby road John Pritchard, hope you enjoyed your racing. Various regulars were away, and John Carlin stayed briefly to discuss some parts for a starting system but had to leave before sailing.

The usual course was used, with a line which favoured the starboard end, and was also conveniently far away from the RO to make spotting OCS easy. The initial intention was for all to share the RO duties, but Dave Williams’ boat had some electrical gremlins which he was unable to fix pondside, so he very kindly ran all the races, leaving the fleet down to eleven racers.

Racing was once again very competitive, and the shifty conditions meant that no one could relax at any stage of the race. Mike dsp won 5 races during the morning’s sailing, but his total before discards was actually more than Jon Whitehead and Andrew Potter who sailed more consistently and also won two and three races respectively.

In the end Mike’s wins were just enough to run out the winner, followed closely by Jon and Andrew, with overall results shown below.

Many thanks again to Dave for ROing.

  1. Mike de St Paer            13pts   5 wins
  2. Jon Whitehead             16 pts  2 wins
  3. Andrew Potter              17 pts  3 wins
  4. Frans KIng                     41 pts  1 x 2nd
  5. Clive Warren                 41 pts
  6. Neil Westbrook            43 pts
  7. John Pritchard              53 pts
  8. Dave Howard                 59 pts
  9. Richard Walker             60 pts
  10. Don McKinnon              63 pts
  11. Paul Little                        66 pts

DF95’s

The afternoon got underway with 8 skippers taking part which was great to see  as a number of regulars were unavailable for various reasons. A big welcome to Jon Whitehead on his maiden 95 voyage, following on from Mikes inaugural 95 sail last week.
The conditions were very similar to the morning, warm and partly sunny a steadyish Northwesterly , which was perfect for an A rig but produced just enough shifts and holes to ensure the skippers couldn’t relax. The same course as the morning was used with a mixture of 1 and 2 laps. Seven races were sailed  and a special thanks to Martin Wittingham-Jones for recording the finishers
As seems to be the tradition, we always let the new skipper win the first race to keep them keen!! (only kidding but it happened last week with Mike and again this week with Jon) – well sailed Jon. Neil was 2nd  and Clive 3rd.. Racing was close throughout the fleet with private battles throughout with 6 of the helms scoring a top 3 place. Neil was unlucky with battery problems which caused him control issues in 2 races, before skipping 2 races to diagnose and sort, otherwise he would have a much better result. Mike sailed steadily notching up 2 wins, Clive taking 3 and Jon finishing  the day the way he started taking the last race with a win.
Results (with 1 discard)
1   Clive Warren         11pts     3 wins
2    Jon Whitehead    14pts    2 wins
3   Mike de St Paer    15pts    2 wins
4   Neil Westbrook    26pts
5   Richard Walker     30pts
6   Frans King              31pts
7   Paul Little               32pts
8   Dave Howard        35pts