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Sunday 10th...

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  • I think this was probably a nice day for winter sailing, but I fear I hardly noticed. It was one of those days. We had a half sunk rescue boat to contend with (anything, but anything is better than leaving the orange things moored stern on to the waves), a missing mast and intermittent starting on the committee boat and safety boat one delivering what felt like a good three horsepower. Heigh Ho. Also, and probably the biggest problem, the current writer has clogged up lungs left over from a cold and was operating a long way short of optimum!

    Anyway, there was a nice breeze, the rain held off and it wasn't too cold for most people, and I thought I heard a good number of folk saying they had a good day. 

    Race one, I wasn't doing well with course setting, but with Kevin Ps inspiration set up something that looked OK, but meant moving X, so I whammed on full throttle on the safety boat and hurtled across the reservoir at a good knot and a half to collect the mark and move it. It wasn't until I had picked up the mark that I realised that my addled brain had forgotten what the course was and where I intended to put the mark. So I trundled tediously back towards the committee boat to find out, at which point the 4 minute gun went off and the second mark of the course was still sharing the boat with me. Subtlety went out of the window and I dropped the damned thing in the first place that looked half reasonable. I think the anchor hit the bottom just before the first start headed off. So what ended up was a long beat, a broad reach down to the X mark, another shorter beat back up, a rather too one sided run back down, and finally a shy reach back to the start.

    Anyway the race, well, as I said, addled brain, but I saw two RS200s having a pretty good race, some close fighting amongst the Solos and so on, so I hope you enjoyed it. The run wasn't much of a run I fear, and now you know why the X mark could have been better positioned. 

    So, to set up for race two we thought we'd skip the second beat and go for a quadrilateral. Wind was swinging a bit, and bearing in mind lack of ability to zoom round the course doing mark setting we decided to take the second beat out and move X to give hopefully a reach then a decent square run. Positioning was awkward. In order to get some heat in the reach I found myself making the run longer and longer, and I was worried about a short reach under the windward bank. Probably erred in the opposite direction without enough heat in the reach. Oh well: sorry. Did find some time during that race to set a longer start line for race three: been a bit short for race two. The worst of the engine being so down on power is lacking the ability to get quickly out of the way of sailing boats, so I was very wary about getting near moving boats. Lots of close finishes in this race, especially among the Solos as I recall. Reckon there was a good bit of place changing going on. 

    Race Three was similar. We finally seemed to have caught up on ourselves a bit, so were able to extend it to three laps. Fleet was more spaced out, but there were still some very close finishes. Was it fun? I hope so. I reckon this report probably reads like one long whinge about what a horrible day I had. Well, I hope its a mildly amusing whinge...

    I see from the results (if said addled brain is reading them correctly!) that Gareth G was first IBRSC boat, first RS Aero and 4th Grand Master in any class at the Bloody Mary. IBRSC  was the biggest visiting Club with 10 boats. Well done all. While I'm doing congrats, did you spot on the results elsewhere page that Nic Groves picked up a Bronze medal at the Copa Brasil de Vela 2015 in Rio with the Nacra 17 Catamaran class? Think this is one of the last events on the notorious Olympic race area before the actual games.

    Jim C

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