DF65’s
Another grey day with a real chill in the air, but dry and with an A+ S.E. Breeze blowing straight (or at least as straight as it ever does) down the lake from the clubhouse end. Even better the marks were in an almost perfect position with a good start line and gate, and as there were only five takers for the mornings 65 racing it was agreed to us a single windward mark with no spreader.
As ever with sailboat racing nothing is quite as straightforward as it looks, and the conditions proved tricky resulting in some excellent racing and quite a bit of frustration, with hero to zero and back again. Initially it definitely paid to start at the committee end on starboard, but during the morning the breeze went left for a while allowing some good starts from further down the line. Even then the beat proved tricky with the timing of when to tack back on port changing all the time. There were also some significant dead patches which weren’t apparent from the shore and these affected positions both upwind and downwind. The gate was also interesting, as although it was slightly favoured to the club side, there were enough shifts to make the far side pay some of the time, and Clive made some excellent beats to the finish sailing right out to the far bank before tacking back.
Alan was Mr Consistency with four wins and two seconds to finish on 15 points, well clear of Guy on 19 – who also won three races – in second. Mike followed one point later, with Clive on 22 and Dave on 25 with the detailed results shown below.
Despite the overcast weather there was a lot of really close racing, with place swapping on all legs of the course in most races. Thanks as always to Dave for keeping us organised, whilst managing to take a couple of photos and to Malcolm who not only did the results but gave up his morning sailing to do some maintenance assessment work.
DF95’s
A South Easterly light breeze settled in for the afternoon, providing big wind shifts especially around the approach to the windward mark where the buoy was in the lee of the clubhouse. Given the light breeze the good turnout of 11 skippers had an easy choice of A rig.
The full length of the lake was used with a standard windward mark, spreader and gate set, 1 lap races in order to fit more races in. Malcolm Harvey volunteered to keep us in check and be the RO for the afternoon, and unfortunately we lost commodore Dave before the first race with a main winch servo issue.
As seems to be the case recently, the racing was very competitive with 6 of the remaining 10 helms recording at least 1 win. Paul was fast out of the blocks posting back to back wins with Ian second. Clive was next to post a win with Guy second. Stuart T sailed a brilliant fourth race and build a 20m lead at the first mark which he held to the finish, Stuart M. posted his best result of the day taking second. Unfortunately we lost Paul in race 4 with a burnt out rudder servo. Race 5 and our fourth different winner, this time it was Ian’s turn who had been knocking on the door in a couple of the previous races but made it to the line this time.
Clive then switched on his motor and took 4 bullets from the last 6 races with Alan and Andy each picking a deserved win. The minor places were split between Ian, Alan, Guy and visitor for the day Matt Pritchard from Great Orme MYC.
At the end of 11 races, the light was beginning to fade and we decided to finish. Because the racing had been so competitive nobody knew who would walk away with the overall win. It had been a very closely fought taxing afternoon of sailing, with some big wind shifts and plenty of passing opportunities, and also plenty of opportunity to lose out by picking a wrong shift or by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Thanks to Malcolm for the results, being our RO and getting some photos of the action as well.
