Groundhog day at Gautby road with a supposedly South West breeze blowing right over the houses. There was wind in some areas, and after a quick conflab the start was positioned in the north east corner opposite the clubhouse to allow a beat of some sort up to the opposite side. The start mark was positioned about half way down in the usual place and this provided a reasonably good beat. Of course by this time the wind had gone left so the line bias meant there was really only one place to be at the start, but the conditions were such that some good starts were made from various positions (and different tacks) on the line during the morning.
Neil suggested A rig after a quick sail, and although this seemed a bit underpowered initially it proved absolutely the correct choice as the wind steadily picked up, so by the end of racing boats were nose diving – sometimes on the run and sometimes on other legs of the course.
James calmly sailed straight to a win, and then another one after his RO duty. But the rest of his day was frustrated by a recurring winch problem which turned out to be the elastic return line having lost its mojo. This left Paul and Mike to fight it out until James returned with his boat fixed to put in another two bullets in the last two races.
Results ended as shown below, with James having to include a DNS after missing three races, and Mike just beating a very consistent Paul.
A surprisingly pleasant day’s racing despite the unhelpful conditions.
Thanks as always to Dave for keeping us organised and doing the results.
- Mike de St Paer 8 pts 4wins
- Paul Plested 11 pts 1win
- James Douglas 18 pts 4wins
- Richard Walker 20 pts
- Neil Westbrook 24 pts
- Frans King 26 pts
- Dave Williams 30 pts
- John Lee 33 pts
- David White 40 pts
