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DF65 & DF95 Social Racing 2024 – 24/7/24

DF65’s

Almost flat calm at Gautby road on arrival today, with a few catspaws at the far end of the lake.

Alan used his years of competition experience to assess the conditions and immediately volunteered as RO – a very sound decision in your scribes view. Frans had hedged his bets by bringing a very impressive looking electric speedboat but decided to sail when the time came.

What breeze there was seemed to come from the clubhouse end, so it was agreed to start at the far end using a short slightly zig-zag course. This worked well, and the wind then turned to make it a running start, so the start was moved down to the clubhouse end only to have this work as a running start too. The wind then gradually filled in from a more North and West direction as the morning progressed making more sense of the course.

The running starts actually made for very close racing, with crowded arrivals at the first marks and there were plenty of opportunities to sail into areas of no wind and vice versa.

John C made the best of the conditions with four wins, followed by Clive with three and then Mike dsp with no wins but a string of OKish results but not quite enough speed. Final results as shown below with thanks again to Alan for running the racing and Dave for doing the results.

  1. John Carlin           10 pts          4 wins
  2. Clive Warren        12 pts          3 wins
  3. Mike de St Paer   13 pts
  4. Dave Williams     18 pts           1 win
  5. Neil Wesrbrook  22 pts
  6. Sally Collings      29 pts
  7. Frans King           36 pts

DF95’s

Firstly and most importantly, it was great to see John Beech back on the shore line with a transmitter in his hand following his recent illness and looking fighting fit.
Now onto the sailing, and after a very tricky and often frustrating morning, there were only 4 skippers willing to put themselves through the turmoil again of the light southerly or westerly depending on what part of the lake you were on. The reality was that the wind generally had settled more in the Westerly direction and had filled in providing a mid A rig breeze. Don’t be too fooled though, there were still plenty of holes and shifts to allow position changes and to challenge the helms.
Sailing got underway using the full length of the lake and utilising a standard course, starting at the clubhouse end to a spreader taken to port, back down the lake through a gate and to the finish line half way up the lake. With only 4 boats competing the starts were self monitored and the first across the finishing line recorded the results. Single lap races were the order for the day. Seven races were sailed before rain set in and the skippers called it a day.
Clive seemed to master the conditions best winning 6 of the 7 races, although he was pushed hard by the other helms at various stages including Frans who led race 5 until the last 5meters from the line and also John who won the last race. The fight for minor places behind Clive was very competitive with Martin, Frans and John alll recording good results and swapping positions.
Results after 7 races with 1 discard
  1. Clive Warren                            93   6pts   6wins
  2. Frans King                                59  15pts
  3. John Beech                              288  17pts   1 Win
  4. Martin Withington Jones    77  18pts