A game of two halves today as the lake had to be recommissioned ready for Saturday’s DF65 Open event. This involved replacing the marks and also doing a litter pick of the whole site.
Since algae stopped racing some 4 weeks ago, the marks had been removed and today recovered from the undergrowth around the lake. They were then re-roped with a new set of weights kindly obtained by Dave W.
Dave W collected the marks early on and then Peter, Dave White and PaulP sortied the ground tackle, PaulP then went wading to replace the marks and the usual accumulation of over 4 weeks of litter was picked up by another squad.
PaulP had to leave before sailing, which left 6 skippers ready to go, although Phyl couldn’t get his transmitter to talk to the boat so had to miss the racing, otherwise we would have been 7. The wind was SE “ish”, top of A+, with some hefty gusts and corresponding lulls. Since the day was really about seeing if the algae had dispersed sufficiently to enable meaningful racing, it was agreed to go ahead with A+ although A might possibly have been a better fit.
Peter was a dominant first overall with 3 wins in 5 races, the other wins being Andrew Potter and Mike. Mike led the first race but then appeared to hit something after rounding the gate, but subsequent investigation by Peter indicated that this was probably the mudbank at the far end (with the low water level) so after racing the gate was moved upwind a bit.
Andrew missed the last race due to winch line pulley failure, and as the rain was starting it was agreed that enough was enough after 5 races.
Not a day of champagne sailing, but very pleasant to be back racing, with final results as shown below. Hopefully numbers will increase again soon after the holiday period.
- Peter Baldwin 63 5pts 3 wins
- Mike de St Paer 35 9pts 1 win
- Andrew Potter 194 11pts 1 win
- John Carlin 11 12pts
- Dave Williams 33 17pts
- Dave White 94 21pts
