DF65’s
A great start to the sailing day with a crisp N. Westerly blowing straight down the lake. Despite the sun the wind felt distinctly chilly sending a few skippers back for some extra layers. There was a bit of chop at the leeward end of the lake but the wind action seemed to have reduced the algae, and no boats appeared to suffer any effects from this during the morning’s racing.
The usual course format was agreed with two of the rather random selection of leeward end marks providing an almost perfect start line. As there were only eight skippers a single leeward mark was agreed to save resetting the gate and this worked OK.
Mike got away quickly with three wins in a row, but then John – who had suffered a coming together in race three – made a couple of tweaks and was immediately much faster winning four of the last five races. There were some significant shifts to play with, and then a tricky area approaching the top mark resulting in a few games of musical chairs in some of the races which materially altered the rounding positions.
The breeze stayed in at top end of B rig levels giving some great sailing and the odd downwind nose dive. There was also quite a bit of inadvertent minor contact and a couple of entanglements due to the rather gusty conditions but no damage. Alan missed race seven after discovering a leak in the battery hatch cover and Charles and Andrew missed some of the races for other reasons.
Mike held on to win from John with Clive third and only four points between these three boats. Clive didn’t score any wins but was a model of consistency recording second position in every race to count. Full results as shown below with thanks to Dave for getting us away on time, plus taking the photos whilst sailing and Malcolm for doing the results.
