Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club

Another nice day. Breezy too when I arrived, with gusts showing on the anenometer hitting the 20knot region, but quite harmless looking clouds. Somehow it didn't look as if it ought to be that windy, and in any case it was very up and down. Sure enough it calmed down, and continued to drop through the evening really.

So, course. What I call a Bruce Banks course, if you know their sail logo. Moderate length beat, port rounding, broadish reach across the reservoir, starboard rounding, another beat, starboard rounding, deeper reach back down to the start and a port rounding to finish the lap. 

A recall at the first start, and Anna Rowe/Kyo Wong's Feva didn't hear the call to go back, don't know if anyone else was over the line. Nice patch of breeze for the second start, and the front of the fast fleet was up with the tail of the slow fleet by the windward mark. I dunno, OK we're closer to thge Solos than before, but not closer to the Lasers, but it feels as if we are getting into the slow fleet very soon this year. Maybe I'd feel differently if I was in an RS200.

There seemed to be a considerable battle going on between RS400s and Richard Barker's Phantom this week, vocal at times too. The starboard rounding at the end of the second beat was one location: at times that beat was very one sided, and a short hitch at the start of the beat could see you close to the layline and maybe struggling to make the mark on port, not a time at which you want to meet someone on starboard. I don't know the rights and wrongs of the incident, but the subtleties of rule 18 are well worth reading. Its well worth having a little bit of room for manouver when approaching a starboard rounding on port.

There was also fun at one of the leeward marks, where an RS400 had to gybe onto port to make the mark, found himself impeding a starboard boat, having to gybe back in a hurry and then being taken up too high again by the other boat. He ended up doing turns as well to add injury on injury. 

By about the end of lap two Mike & Harry's RS400 had managed to exploit a handy gust to get right out in clear air, and no-one managed to reel them back in again. Behind them clear air was a rather rarer phenomenum, it was all pretty intense. Notably going well was Paul Playle's Solo, and an RS200 with very brand new new style sails and no sail numbers, which turned out to be Andy and Jo. Quite an intense competition between Kevin Pearson and Ben Jones in Lasers too, Ben especially I saw rather more of than I wanted to...

So, results. I had thought Paul was pretty well placed, but Mike and Harry won by a considerable margin in the end. Paul was fairly narrowly second from Richard Barker's Phantom, With Andy barnett 4th and Kevin Pearson just pipping Ben Jones for 5th at the end. This purts Mike in the lead in the series, but it looks anyone's game yet, with four race winners from 5 races. You need to read the tables with a bit of care too. At the moment I am entering results separately for each class a sailor enters with, even though we allow sailors to combine results from different classes. It makes life much easier for me at this stage of a series. There's also the potential confusion of when an Aero 7 is an Aero 7, and when it is an Aero 9 reefed down. The Aeros have put some rather (IMNSHO) ill advised rules about this in their Class Rules (not IMNSHO the right place) which really will not work well for long series. 

In the personal handicap Mike Jones and Uta Griesenbach took another win to lead the series handily. Dave Baldwin took second, Mike & Harry third, Chris |smith 4th,CJ 5th in an RS400 this week, and Roy Poole 6th in a Solo. Mike Curtis is an ineligibleforprizes second place in the series(there's another compound neologism for you Mike), and thereon its all very open.