Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club

Well, I'm just looking at a GPS track, and its telling me I hit 52 knots in the Canoe tonight. I should think that's a club record. What's more it was going dead to windward up by mark 2 which was in windshadow from the trees tonight. Remarkable. I wonder if there could have been a GPS glitch, because you'd think I'd remember the boat suddenly leaping sideways with unbelieveable acceleration... The rest of the time I was doing about 7 knots there...

Anyway, back in the real world we had a very good evening's racing. Tonight's course was one for the singlehnders, with a long beat, a long semi run and two short reaches spacing them out. breeze was something a bit north of easterly, but there was still lots of the dreaded turbulence and in consistent wind coming through the trees and up the eastern bank of the reservoir. Louring clouds threatened serious rain, with that strange light effect you get when the sun is shining onto the under side of clouds late in the evening, but the rain held off and it was warm and there was a nice enough breeze: towards the top of force 2 I guess, and enough for a well known former club commodore and ex Laser sailor to examine the underside of his new (to him) Solo in some detail before the start...

I seem to be apologising for not noticing what was going on a lot in this season's reports, and tonight is no exception. In spite (or perhaps because) of getting out on the water unaccustomedly early I missed sound signals and didn't see the Solo start, and the Lasers were a bit thin tonight. The fast fleet mostly elected for a starboard tack start well along the line towards the pin, but I started near the committee boat on port and headed right which seemed to work well enough. Behind me the others seemed to be contesting the windward mark vigorously, with Graham Potter's Albacore very well in evidence amongst a bunch of 200s and Mike Storey's EPS. Later on I think the EPS pulled clear of the others, and I hear there was a good fight among the 200s with plenty of place changing.

Coming further though the fleet there seemed to be a bit of a battle going on amongst the leading Solos, somewhat mixed in with Dave Baldwin's Vareo, although Paul Playle seemed to have pulled out a bit of a lead on the rest when I got up to him. I fear I must have been the other side of the beat from the Lasers when I got to them, and hardly noticed them.

So results. Solo (Playle), Lasers (Wright Anderson and Cairns), Solo (Pettit), Streaker (Chris Smith) and Mike Storey's EPS rounding out the top 6. Obviously not an evening for sailing angles on the run. The spinnaker boats did a bit better in the personal handicap with Harry and Liz knocking up another win, Dave Baldwin 2nd in his Vareo, Paul Playle 3rd, Ian Pace (Solo) 4th, Clare and Lucy 5th in a 200 and my Canoe rounding out the top 6.

Be careful reading series results, because I am yet to combine people sailing different boats 
(spot who sailed their 3rd different class in the series after only 5 races), but you've got to think that Solos are looking good with the weather so far. In the personal handicap series Harry and Liz have clocked up 4 wins from 4 starts...