Forecast is looking good for Thursday so we're on. 5pm for registration which should take about 15 or so mins and then 1st race straight after. Second race starts at 6.30pm.

Hope it blows I am dying for a half decent sail on a small board.

Thank you all for the great turn out, we had 30 competitors unofficially register for the fun race. Young and old, male and female. It was a bit of a rushed start as my watch stopped a 3pm so I was dawdling around thinking I had hours to spare when it was actually time to start the race.

At around 3.30pm (I think) the wind was looking very promising, I was very powered on my 7.8m so I rigged my 6.7 with 90L slalom in the anticipation of the wind building.

Unfortunately it didn't, heavy cloud cover killed it. Nevertheless we kicked of the 1st heat in marginal breeze and a few caught a luck gust and set the pace. The rest of us were flapping sails madly trying to get into the action. So 1st heat was half planning half slogging / pumping, most of us got a great workout.

2nd heat only had 3 finishers as the wind really clapped out. Perhaps 4, as Chloe made a galant effort to finish the heat after most had given up. Technically she did round the buoy in the car park, with full kit albeit on foot.

So based on the marginal results we could say that first 3 places went to:-
1. Chris Ting, 2. Sam Parker 3. Jaime Coelho.... however protests have been registered against Chris and Sam so the jury is still out.

Chris was rumoured to be using non homologated home made fins and Sam wasn't going to race and also started late.

Despite the average conditions lot's of fun was had by all, better luck with wind for next week.

Pics will be posted soon.

Yeah,,,,,, Thanks Des for all the effort. And thanks to an injured, (but still fast) Sam Parker for bringing down the bouy, rigging late while Des set the bouy, and still finishing 2nd, even after starting the race half an hour after the rest of us! Sure Sam would have won both races if Chris Ting,,,,(or as he is known internationally) ,,,DR FIn!!!!! wasn't using top secret ,,,Quote,,,"GRUNTY" VMG hybrid Slalom/formula Fins. Smells like cheating,,,LOL ;-)

Seriously, is my first time out at such an event, and had a great time despite the lack of wind And seeing DR FIN planning past the whole fleet straight onto the champions podium, makes me believe there is hope for all of us to do so well !!! As long as he shares the deep dark secrets of his fins!!! Think DR TING/FIN needs to be handicapped next time out??? How about NO fin allowed for him?

bdl2333 said...

should be some serious carnage at the start and around the bouys.

Yeah, I'm going to install some bumper bars on the new board, it felt pretty crowded off the start line.

OK team ready for action? Looks like we have a NE breeze forecast for this Wednesday 5 Nov so please cancel all appointments for the afternoon!
Race times are still 5pm and 6.30pm

We noticed yesterday that the buoy has been moved about 100m upwind which should make it easier...they must have seen us struggling the other day.

A bunch of us did some practice races yesterday, talk about determination and enthusiasm and man I'm knackered now.

Now that we've run a race (sort off) we have a few tweaks to the rules.

1. When you finish the heat, ie. go past the windward side of the beach buoy on the second lap. Please report to the scorer right away and give them you name so they can enter a ranking.
With 30 entries last week and no sail numbers it was too difficult to identify by gear.

2. If you are tacking (or swimming around the buoy), you must do so from the windward side. ie. sail past and above the buoy (give yourself plenty of space), do your tack and then round the the buoy (sail back on the leeward side).

During yesterdays practice it made it very interesting having sailors gybing while others were tacking from the leeward side of the buoy - you meet in the middle head on.

Anyone got a bit of 4 x 2??

We will run the handicap this week. It was the plan last week, but because my watch stopped and it was 5pm and not 3pm like I thought, we ran out of time.

However, we have master Parker managing the score sheet this week so hopefully we should be in good hands.

I still like the idea of making the more experienced racers do their Le Mans start from the car park.

have fun on Wednesday guys, moving house migt head down tomorrow for a bash however.

sweet as, see you there around 4:30 - 5 ish. I hope to be able to rig a small sail for once!

Ops, just talking to Sam and he mentioned that all the retired, unemployed and part timers meet for a sail again tomorrow. Is this becoming a regular thing? Well, I try to get out of the office early and get me one of those cartons of Coopers while you're on the water. Hope there is more wind than we had last week.

Just in case you missed it, as some did.

The race is on tomorrow, Wednesday 5th - 5pm & 6.30pm.

All welcome, irrespective of your sailing ability.

I'll say this quietly, so I don't upset the cosmic balance again, shhh it's looking good for our race session on Thursday.

BOM **** Thursday Outlook: Wind: NW/NE 10/20 knots, increasing to NE 20/30 knots.

So this week for the hard working crew that are always there early we will have a pre race session around 3 or 4 pm, just in case history repeats itself and the wind dies by race time at 5pm. I'm feeling so positive so I'm going to dust off the cob webs from my 6.7M

in the words of 'The Rock' - "just bring it!"

The forecast is looking good for this Wednesday 19th for the next race. So please pencil it in at this stage. We will lock it in this afternoon is the forecast holds in the 4pm BOM update. Fingers crossed.