The Birkenhead club decided to run a ‘pop up’ RG65 Open Event with an 11am start on the Saturday of the Jubilee weekend and we managed to get 9 entries, 2 Pocket Rockets (Dave Creed), 6 Uno (Caccerelli/VAM) and 1 Argon (Sails etc/Bantock).The wind was kinder to us than expected and came mainly down from Gautby Road with shifts and some quite heavy gusts that saw most of the fleet diving downwind at some point. Most opted for a slightly lower aspect rig but Martin, Bill and Graham all opted for there full height swing rigs. We also welcomed Bill Culshaw to the RG fleet this week with his borrowed Pocket Rocket from Peter. Lets hope he returns, but he did mention that he had completed 14000 steps during the day, although we don’t normally sail 18 races in an afternoon!
The racing was a lot closer than normal throughout the fleet and it was only in a few races that the leader broke away from the rest of the fleet to win by a large margin.
With the absence of Bernie, (we all send our best wishes to Bernie who had an op in the week), we decided that each skipper would drop out of 2 races to take up start and finishing duties and score these races with zero points after some discussion.
In the end it was Martin with a fantastic 9 wins that took top honours (and the winners bottle) with Graham in second place with just 2 wins and Peter completing the podium with 4 wins, John in 4th was the last race winner on the day with 3 wins, just 4 points separating the top three.
Pictures thanks to Bill Culshaw and Alan Watkinson.
This event was used as a tune-up for the next RG65 TT at Bournville on Saturday 11th June – Entry via the MYA website.
