A glorious sunny day greeted the sailors as they arrived, but would the wind show up to make it complete? That question was soon answered as a light breeze started to blow down the lake from the far end once boats were rigged and Peter was moving marks around to suit the wind direction.
We started on time at 13:00 with 10 sailors coming to the start line for a few self monitored starts and the winner recording the finishing positions. Guy Cowper started well and led the first couple of races for a while, before Peter Baldwin overhauled him, usually because of a minor tactical error or mark contact at the Leeward gate. Also up there in these races were Clive Warren, Duncan Neale and Alan Watkinson and the podium places were usually taken up by this group of 5; with the top 5 in Race 2 being in exactly the same positions as Race 1. In Race 5, John Beech came to the fore and led around the first mark and although overtaken by Guy and Peter, he held onto a solid third place. By now, Robbie Mac had turned up and offered to run the racing and write the finishing scores, which proved very useful.
At the halfway stage, Peter was clear ahead, with Guy in second and Clive in third. The wind had held up although varying in strength we rarely saw it dropping away to nothing. However, there were some holes and shifts to catch you out in some unexpected ways.
In the second session after the break, Peter didn’t achieve all the wins, with Alan taking one and Clive picking up the last two after a minor tweak to the twist in his main, giving him a slight edge over Peter. Alan also had a better afternoon and had podium scores for all of these six races. Guy unfortunately couldn’t seem to replicate his form from the first session and only had one podium position. There was plenty of close competition through the fleet however, with many close finishes in the middle order requiring a keen eye to split boats just inches apart on the finishing line.
At the finish, Peter took a clear win, with Alan’s afternoon results lifting him to second and Clive picking up third, due to his two wins in the last races. An afternoon of close to champagne conditions for the ten skippers. Do join us next time on Saturday 16th May for Round #2 of the Summer series. Many thanks to Robbie Mac for acting as RO and taking this weeks photos, plus Dave Williams for pulling the scored together.
