Race Report 24/25 Oct Autumn Series
Published 11:00 on 30 Oct 2021
RO Simon Palmer (Club President) assisted by Julie Swindall,
PB Jerry Robinson (prop & guard biggest enemy) & Bob Hewitt,
Very similar conditions as last Sunday, only with a reversal of the tide giving us an easy launch, and tricky landing, made trickier by poor judgement by at least one helm (me) resulting in near crunching of hulls/rudders..... Top tips - as well as dropping the main (done), the other essentials are straight up the beach and all the weight as far back as possible...
If anything, the wind was a little lighter, but the waves certainly as big if not biggerer- instilling foreboding for the delivery of boat and crew back to dry land, when we (well, I) should have been concentrating on racing. And the racing was great, with two distinct sections to the fleet of Rob/Fi, Rod/Luca and the Coopers, and then the rest, with some misfortunes dictating how the second half finished. For instance, putting the starboard rudder on the port hull, and therefore p.r. on s.h., was found to be sub-optimal for Keith/Trevor... who then saved lots of time by, instead of sailing that vast distance (250 metres?) back to the beach to swap them round , instead enlisted the patrol boat to help them painfully and long-windedly do it out to sea. Also, whereas not tying off the jib-halyard correctly, diving into the shore at the r1/r2 interval to fix it (poorly, so that it was worse than before) was not great for the Gilbert/Neil Innes duo.
At the other end of proceedings, some great aggressive sailing saw the Rawlings charge up the fleet in r1 to get to the windward mark at or near the top of the fleet. Job done, they gruffly said to each other, and then retired, their work done for the day. For the rest of the leading trio, it was a case of Rod/Luca guiding Rob/Fi over the opening laps only to be pegged back, in the last lap for s1. How frustrating...
The other fleets were not sufficiently represented to constitute races that count, but Mark did well in a pico to battle through the big waves, whilst Phil/Steve Topaz'd around the course.
Honourable mentions for the two Feva crews (Noah Walters/Josh Rawlings, Archie Oakden/Max England) that spent the weekend at Lymington Sailing Club at a regatta where apparently there were issues with reading the course, rehydration and not having double-barrelled names...
it's looking a bit windy for the Sunday coming, but what is also guaranteed is some fine fare from Jonty/Sasha...