Race Report - Sunday Jan 2nd

This Sunday saw the start of the 2011 Winter Series at Datchet. The Club was exceptionally quiet, but in fact the Fifteens put a good fleet out. We had six boats on the line - I thought we had a seventh, but the Vice Fleet Captain turned up in sunglasses (and his best sweater) saying he was off to Florida for a couple of weeks. Weather conditions were pretty hopeless really, about 3-4knots of northerly and around two degrees.
Race one, was a matter of who got to the line on time. Mostly we were huddled too long over our tea mugs and slow to get to the start area. Bang on time, first out of the gate was Mervyn Wright and James Watson, in 3536, closely followed by Mike Firth with VC Tinsley in the broadcasters chair (!). The rest of us were pretty strung out in the same order as our tea had been served. With this drawn out gate sequence, you'd think there wasn't that much overtaking going on. You'd be surprised though... Firth and Tinsley wriggled into the lead, and in this Force 1 were never seen again. New boys Mervyn and James had listened to all our advice that FF's go well in the light with really tight rig tension, and slipped from first to last. Andy and Nadia had a great tussle with visiting team, Ian Linder and Kevin Sweetman. Andy and Nadia gybed immediately onto port round the windward mark, following a puff which took them to the shore by the pier, gybed on to starboard and overtook Ian Linder into the leeward mark. Meanwhile the Humes, wearing their brand new McNamara sails were probably quickest around the course ona line to line basis. Last out of the gate, they looked at one time as if they had picked the route to sail around the entire fleet. They finished a good fourth.


At the finish it was 3888(Firth/Tinsley), 3378 (Clark, Melnikova), 3851 (Linder/Sweetman), 3559 (2x Humes), 3934 (Jones/Shawyer), 3536 (Wright/Watson)
For Race two there was even less breeze - just whispers across the water. Ian Linder found a puff and frankly just left the rest of us behind for the day. We finished a lap and a bit - the PRO went for an impromptu floating line at the top of the first run and closed the race there.
Final Results showing were: Linder, Hume, Clark, Jones, Firth (Retd) , Wright (Retd) but again some PRO disputes there as Jones finished ahead of Clark on the day.
Very notable absentees today - John and Helen, Mark and Tony. The VC has noted your names....