Tonight was an evening that started windy but calmed down after Gareth Griffiths reached the windward mark in his Solo... I was planning to reach the windward mark before him, but my toestraps had other ideas... This is one of the classic misadventures in dinghy racing, and I always feel it should involve jerky black and white images, heavy white makeup and maybe even a porkpie hat... Though I say it myself this was a particularly good one, since it happened in two stages: first the clamp fitting pinged off, dropping its victim a foot downwards beyond all hope of getting back in the boat, but leaving the webbing itself hanging on the countersunk screws. Then, after a a delay that was just long enough for the vain hope one might get out of this to materialise, the webbing let go too to initiate the classic backward half somersault into the water. All that was needed was a large carnivorous freshwater fish cruising past...
Yes, so anyway I took no further part in the race, so further material for the report is a bit limited. A shortish race of course this late in the season, and although the fleets looked quite spaced out at one stage they finished largely in a couple of bunches from what I can see in the results.
Gareth took the race from Mike, with Carl Mayhew 3rd, Kevin Pearson 4th, Paul W/A 5th and John Smith 6th.
Dave Baldwin took the personal race from Nigel Cope, with John Smith 3rd, Clare James and Tessa Groves 4th, Kirstie Johnson 5th and Roy Poole 6th.
Provisional Final results are here.
Scratch handicap series:Gareth won, Mike and Sophie were 2nd, Mike and Julie were third.
Personal Handicap series - Ian and Claire won, Graham and Chris 2nd, CJ 3rd.
I suppose my overwhelming impression of the series was that it was a wet and windy summer. I should maybe go back through other year's reports to check, but there seemed to be a lot of rain and a good bit of breeze about. No suprise really.
here, as mantioned by Gareth, are the six race winners and six classes of boat, Kevin P appearing twice!
For interest the average points for the top seven were
I've also taken a look at the personal handicap ratings for the series. Suprisingly only three crews who did a reasonable number of races achieved results equivalent to a band below their current handicap band, and they were... Ian and Claire, Graham and Chris, and CJ. A few did manage performances in the other direction, headed, I fear by myself, but my excuse is that I'm still working up the little Moth, and in any case its fundamentally too small for me to sail competitively in many conditions unless I can raise the self discipline to lose about 4 stone in weight. Its still fun though:)