Unfortunately the forecast was pretty spot on for direction with a breeze that was over the houses (WSW) and so could not decide which end to blow from at any time. Peter set a figure of 8 in an attempt to possibly produce two beats, a run and some reaching. Although we may well have done that, there were some legs where we did all three in the one leg! You definitely needed your wits about you to keep the boat moving.
Choice of rig was difficult as well with some A swing rigs having to be hurriedly changed by 4 of the six sailors before we had even started (leading to a good 10 minute delay) and a range of A & B conventional, plus a few different swing rigs graced the first start. Most rigs were fine at some point and so it was all about percentages as there were some strong gusts, but they rarely lasted longer than 10 seconds and so an A could mostly cope, but a B conventional was probably the right choice.
Alan Bennett, fresh from his RG65 Nationals win last weekend proved to be the boat to beat sporting a square topped B rig, chased hard by both son George and Peter Baldwin, who shared the podium places in the first five races before the break, with Peter in an A rig finally managing to pick up wins in Races 3 and 5. George was usually up there vying for second place with Peter in his new Ivy and picked up three 2nd’s in this set.
Alan W was struggling with his rig and so missed two races along with Dave, who finally made the start in Race 3 and picked up a 4th. Charles and Dave were both having trouble in rounding the marks on the far side which were over 40m away from the Control area and unfortunately often ended up to windward of the mark and so had to re-round.
After the break, Alan B continued to dominate with another 4 wins, with Peter picking up most of the seconds sometimes by just a half boat length from George at the finish line. George however finally got his just rewards with a great win in Race 7, with Alan W taking a close second as he powered through underneath Peter on the finish line.
Overall a “sort of” enjoyable if frustrating afternoon with typical WSW wind conditions that had probably backed to the South by the end and perhaps a different course might have proved more challenging. Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? At least the sun was out and it didn’t seem too hot in the breeze.
Thanks to Paul Plested for most of the photos taken during a flying visit in the second session and to Neil Westbrook for acting as RO and keeping score.
