A decent fleet of seven RG65’s turned out for racing today on a sunny afternoon with a breeze that was nominally straight down the lake. With a single Ivy sailed by Alan Bennett and six Uno’s, it became an Uno shoot out for second place overall.
Alan Bennett dominated the day with a masterclass taking a win from all 12 races sailed. Other than a couple of races where Peter picked the right start and got an initial leg up, Alan was usually first to the windward mark and then off downwind, leaving the rest playing an impossible task of catch-up.
With around 8 to 10mph wind, there were a selction of different rigs to start with from full sized swing through to low aspect swing and conventional rigs. It soon became obvious that boats with a full sized swing rig were coping well with the conditions and so a few changed up after a couple of races, although others left it until half-time to make the change up to a full size swing rig. John Berry was going well in the first session using a full sized low aspect conventional and seemed to have more power going upwind and only at a slight disadvantage downwind. Alan W also had a decent first session picking up a number of seconds and thirds, but seemed to struggle with boat speed after the break. This allowed John to overhaul him in the overall standings by the end.
We were joined this week by Phil Davies from Etherow, who by the time he had sailed 9 races was starting to get to grips with the nuances of a swing rig and ended up with a good consistent day. Dave had some good results as well showing good speed at times, but unfortunately was unable to capitalise on this for the whole afternoon.
By the time we had sailed 12 races, Alan B stood out as clear winner, discarding two firsts, with Peter clear second and John Berry getting a well deserved third. Thanks go to Neil Westbrook for acting as RO for the afternoon and Dave for taking the photos (dropping out for at least one race to do so) and producing the final scores below.
