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DF95 Social Racing 2025 – 4/6/25

A good north westerly breeze which looked straight down the lake greeted the seven DF95 skippers at a sunny  Gautby road. It looked a perfect sailing day. The choice of rig was the first question to be answered A or B, Dave Williams  was this weeks guinea pig and put an A set on and which was top end but perfect.
Neil Westbrook volunteered to be our RO for the morning and set a standard course of, windward mark, spreader, gate and a finish line half way up the lake and got us underway on time. Unfortunately before racing started Martin Whittington Jones had a winch servo problem which prevented him sailing for the day.
The wind, although looking virtually straight down the lake was in true Gautby road tradition was anything but, Although there weren’t many holes in the wind, there were plenty of shifts to catch the unsuspecting helm out,  pick a wrong one and you could be headed for 20sec or more.  The shifts were also not consistent, meaning there were plenty of opportunities to gain or lose places.
Clive was fast out of the blocks taking the first 3 races, although the pack were getting closer with each race. It was John Carlin who stopped Clive’s winning street in race 4 with the improving John Beech 2nd which started a consistent run of 2nds and 3rds for him over the next4 races. Meanwhile Clive was lucky to win race 5 when John C and Richard got tangled whilst leading nearing the windward mark. The inconsistent Dave W finally got a win in race 6. Race 8 and it was Richard who had finally got his boat moving who took the win, chased closely by Dave W and Clive. By this time the wind had gone up a notch and in the gusts the boats started to nosedive on the run .In the last 4 races line honours were split amongst the helms with John C taking 2 wins, John B 1 win and Dave W 1 win with him also having to retire in the last race with rudder servo issues
After 12 races Neil called it a day, which was just about the right timing as a change to B rig was imminent
  1. Clive Warren        18pts        5 x wins
  2. John Carlin           26pts        3 x wins
  3. John Beech            26pts       1 x win
  4. Dave Williams     30pts        2 x wins
  5. Richard Walker   33pts        1  win
  6. Malcolm Harvey 58pts
  7. Martin Whittington Jones  DNS
Summary
An  extremely enjoyable morning, with a good but challenging shifting breeze, which was top end of A rig bordering B rig nearing the end. Sailing was very close with 5 of the 6 boats on the water taking at least 1 win each
Many thanks to Neil for volunteering as RO, and keeping us in check, its much appreciated, with a few photos supplied by Dave W whilst also helming his boat!