Another exciting days sailing interspersed with calm patches as the wind fought with itself from two directions. With no GPs or Mirrors, there was only the handicap fleet competing and with 12 boats overall.
Due to the changing winds, not surprisingly, finding and staying in the wind or gusts made all the difference. Shunty used the gusts to his advantage to catch Scumper, and finally broke away with a big lead to take the morning race.
The afternoon race was a pennant race that took the boats around the lake. The OD had discussed missing marks at lunchtime and was told that 14 was missing, so left it out of the course. However, after Neil Currie rounded 12 in the lead he headed across to 13 and kept looking and looking but to no avail. So some bright spark suggested the fleet went around 14 instead. Unfortunately this was to seriously disadvantage the leading RS400s and the race was eventually scrapped.
Boring…
… That was Toggle’s thoughts on the events that filled last week’s report. Now that may have been because he wasn’t here to contribute to the weekends events. Of course, he had to make up for it on Saturday as he learns to get to grips with his RS Vario. It could be that Toggle is finding gybing (without capsizing) one of the more challenging aspects. However, after several capsizes, and much barracking from Scumper and Robbie D, he was still smiling at the end of the day. Whether he feels that way this morning with various aches and bruises who knows?!
Toggle was not the only casualty of the day, but amongst others, we can’t fail to mention Roy and Kayla’s capsize – much to Kayla’s delight, it didn’t stop them finishing ahead of William. Subsequent to this Roy exited the boat a little early as they came ashore leaving Kayla to stop it running aground while he waded out of the water. There were several occasions when William and Jonathan were close to joining them in the league of casualties – firstly when the William didn’t realise the main had cleated itself again during a tack, and then when a knotted halyard prevented Jonathan getting the gennaker down for so long that they almost ended up on the A66.
As for the racing, Scumper and Andy T left the fast handicap fleet standing having broken into the lead and taken advantage of some of the good gusts that were around. Similarly, Hugh and Rhonwen won both of the GP races comfortably. In the mirror fleet, Mik was back on the water at last showing Toddy (the young(?) pretender) the way home