This last day of sailing in 2024 at the club, proved to be one to blow the cobwebs away. As we arrived, the tail end of a squall gave heavy rain and strong gusts such that a C rig looked to be on the cards, but soon after the wind abated and we started on B rigs after Peter had tweaked the marks a little to align with the Westerly breeze. It was nearly straight down the lake but had some strong gusts from over the houses. Big shifts and the potential for stalling the boat was very likely at any point during the afternoon and so the key task was to keep it moving at all times.
In the first session of six races before the break we had five different winners, in the form of Peter Baldwin, Paul Plested, John Brierley, Martin Roberts and visitor Paul Middleton, with only John racking up two wins. The wind abated at one point such that we really needed A rigs as we bobbed up and down waiting for the next gust. However, this was very short lived and by the start of the next race B rig was the right one to be using once more.
After the break, conditions were very similar for around three races, until the gusts started to increase in strength. The forecasts were suggesting at least double in the gusts and that looked to be the case with plenty of nose-diving and occasional loss of control. That is until the last race when the average picked up a notch during the race and we were into survival mode for the remainder, leading to some lost places for those who couldn’t tack away from the far bank. This session belonged to John as he notched up 4 wins, with Martin and Peter taking the other two. This gave John an easy win on 14 points with Martin second on 21 and Peter third on 25.
Thanks go to Neil for running the afternoon and to Dave for helping him out and scoring the day after some electrical problems during the afternoon led to few race finishes for him. Photos from Dave Williams and Paul Plested.
- John Brierley 84 14pts
- Martin Roberts 184 21pts
- Peter Baldwin 172 25pts
- Paul Middleton 06 34pts
- Paul Plested 154 48pts
- John Carlin 50 55pts
- Alan Watkinson 23 58pts
