General recalls, boats over the line….. Not a good start to the RNLI pennant race held on Sunday. A recall was made for two flying 15s after the second start. Mike Moore/Tim Chittenden was the first to go back, but it took a visit from a rescue boat to persuade John Somerville/Scott Beattie that his premature start was not going to be allowed. It was to be about five minutes before he returned to the startline and correctly started. Paul Burnell had taken the lead in his Fifteen and was being hotly pursued by Rory Yardley in his Laser Vortex. Unusually for a round the lake race, the wind was blowing from the North East which meant sailors had to decide between taking the eastern shore and getting gusts early, or opting for the middle route that was less likely to suffer from wind shadows from the shoreline.
While William Carruthers/Alan Smith was trying to catch up with Paul Burnell, Mike had opted for the middle route and was catching up well, while John came down the eastern shore on a seemingly endless gust that the leaders were not privy to! By the time the fleet reached mark 12, Rory was starting to pull away, William was close on Paul’s tail, and Mike was fighting off John not too far behind.
The beat back up the lake started to split the fleet and John and William were having a close tussle by mark 11. This continued all the way to mark 0 by which time John had pulled clear ahead. However, on rounding the mark John and Scott assumed they had finished and headed for shore enabling William to take the advantage which he held for the final lap.
Adjusting the finishing times to suit the different boats’ handicaps, resulted in Rory taking the trophy some 20 seconds ahead from William.
The weekend brought various long series to a close, leaving just two weekend series to decide the club championships. Is everything cut and dried? We’ll just have to wait and see!
The GP fleet were away at the NW Area Championships being held at Windermere – poor ***s – on a calm day it’s 10x worse than Bass. However, it was a strong fleet of 56 boats of which Bass had 7 competitors. Well done to Dave and Lynne Lawson for finishing 7th, Phil Smith and Toggle Cowan for finishing 11th (one place behind Steve Goacher!) and taking the silver fleet trophy.