It was one of those mornings. A good breeze (at times), with hollow patches in between, but did anyone really make the most of it all?
First Scumper and Robbie D only just made it to the start line on time, but as they crossed the line a recall signal was sounded so they ducked back just in case (turns out they weren’t over the line in any case!). They made up ground to be just 8 seconds behind Shunty and Ruth at the windward mark, and managed to pass them on the next leg only to capsize at the next gybe mark. Finally their main halyard snapped, fortunately it was just at the end of the race so they managed to finish.
William and Elaine didn’t realise they were one of the boats over the line, and were recalled by the rescue boat so they lost a couple of minutes by the time they restarted. Their gennaker had a bad habit of dropping out of the cleat on big gusts, much to Elaine’s disgust, and had to be rehoisted. The final blow was no sound signal aat the finish. It seems they had missed out YZ at the end of the first lap as they were too busy watching whether Toggle would survive a hairy plane – he did, but lost a lot of ground because he had borne away below the leeward mark so much.
Bean and Naomi’s only problem was that brother Tim sounded the recall signal and they had to return through the line. They were only a boat length over after all!
Tim Chittenden and Ian Macpherson took Tim’s FF out for the first time and were slowly getting to grips with the mass of ropes and the alternate location of all the control lines. One of their issues was gybing the spinnaker and it got in a bit of a tangle at the first gybe mark. It’s all a learning curve.
Andy T and Lucy in the Vago went for a swim on one beat, and that slowed them down somewhat
Shunty and Ruth seemed to survive the race, but tipped their boat over at the end to remove the remains of the slot gasket. No sailing in the RS for them this afternoon. Or so we thought – although they were going to borrow Mik’s FF, they ended up sailing Toppers
Thomas Bainbridge’s problem was tacking round at marks!
According to Herb, Mik sailed the race with his sails at half mast – perhaps an exaggeration but probably some truth in it.
Dave and Sarah’s biggest problem was that they had no-one to sail against! I only he’d waited as Stu and Debbie Spence had to sail in the handicap fleet in the afternoon as they had no-one to sail against. Co-ordination!
The afternoon race was held in stronger, and more exciting, winds. There were again some eager starters with Bean and Scumper being recalled. Certainly less eventful, but more exciting racing.
Series results were somewhat consistent – Bean and Naomi took the handicap series with four firsts, Mike and Eric had two firsts in the GP series, while Mik won all four Mirror races.