DF65’s
Just like buses – you wait for ages, then 16 DF65 skippers come along to sail, a terrific turnout today for social racing despite missing some key players.
The usual course was used and the WNW wind direction meant the whole length of the lake had some pressure. No one elected to go paddling, so the existing line was used which was significantly starboard tack biased (and rather long!) of which more later. Neil Westbrook very kindly RO’d the whole morning and kept things moving along despite the large fleet.
Neil ran a couple of practice starts – a great idea – which confirmed that the pin was where to be so the starts were very busy with the expected group of boats all occupying the same bit of the lake. Neil called a couple of general’s and a number of individual recalls, but didn’t use the threatened black flag. It proved tricky to see individual sail numbers pre-start but, given the numbers, the starts seemed very fair overall.
There was a bit of left bias to the beat although that changed somewhat in the top half where, even though the wind direction was nearly straight down the lake, there was just enough West in it to make the top half of the beat and the approach to the top mark unpredictable. This made each beat and the approach to the top mark different, and lots of skippers made or lost a number of places here.
Paul emerged from all this with a string of firsts to win 4 out of 8 races and run out a clear winner. Mike Dsp only won one but was consistent enough to bag second just a couple of points clear of Clive, with Alan fourth. A number of skippers had to finish early for various reasons – John Brierly put in some top early results but then found his boat was leaking badly and having just replaced a lot of the electronics he opted to call a halt. Malcolm stopped early to do some boat maintenance, Mike Dsp missed the last race due to an RX battery failure, Andrew Potter suffered rig damage in a race 8 after Port/Starboard clash and Stuart also missed race 8 having posted some very good results.
An excellent days racing with many thanks again to Neil (“I like a good discard”) Westbrook for giving up his morning to RO, and to Dave and Malcolm for the results.
DF95’s
Following on from a great turnout of DF65’s in the morning there were 9 skippers on the start line for the DF95’s in the afternoon. Wind, whilst a little up and down, was still straight down the lake, allowing for the standard course to be used, with everyone on A rigs. Neil Westbrook took on RO duties again and he was quick to call out those who sought to get away early, and there were a few of them caught out over the afternoon.
Clive Warren also started slowly, but like Alan he got better as the afternoon wore on, with four podium positions in the last four races of the day including a last race win. He may well have threatened Alan for second overall if he’d hung on to 2nd in an earlier race, which went begging after tangling with a running boat when lying 2nd on the short beat to the finish
Charles Legg also picked up good points early on and was in contention most of the afternoon but was a a tad shy of boat speed at times. Steve Miller also showed that he is getting better, with a fourth in one race and also being upfront early on in a number of races, which will eventually become results at the line as he progresses.
