The hottest day of the year! That is how July 25 was being advertised and the WS Trustees heeded the warning and decided to curtail the day’s sailing to just the morning session. Nevertheless, a dozen WS Racers came down to the lake in the expectation that they might be able to improve their final ranking in this the final race of the Spring Series.
The volunteers arrived earlier than usual at the lake to rig and launch the fleet, hoping to avoid the worst of the heat. So everything was ready and looking resplendent by 0930 hours and the first Racers started to appear. The wind was forecast to be SE backing ESE at 8 knots, gusting to 20 knots. Well that was the forecast. As the photographs below show, the wind speed was more like 1 knot, gusting to 4 knots (Oh dear, whilst the temperature was climbing inexorably higher! Ed).
In the Race Hut, two volunteers (Paul Cove and John Hunt) were being trained as future race officers and, after summoning the Racers over the Tannoy, they sounded the three minute Gong at 1127 ready to start the race at 1130. Here is a video from a few moments after the start until the leading boats had rounded the first two Marks (J and D). (And a finger-wag to the Stratos helms who sailed a bit too close to the race fleet at times. Ed)
Sailing the course proved to be very tricky with the Chipstead Lake wind – blowing from S or SSE – living up to its reputation of being difficult to read and as a result it often wasn’t where you expected (hoped? Ed) it would be! Here are some photos taken during the sole lap that the race fleet were able to complete in the 30 minutes. The finish for quite a few boats was affected by the inability of sailing straight into the wind in order to sail within the Flag/Distance Marker and Mark K (which delineated the Finish Line). Nicola Buss and her crew Thomas were especially hard done by, coming within 5 boat lengths of the Flag, then being headed by the wind and eventually finishing 3 minutes later, thereby coming 11th rather than 6th. (Oh dear….but the name of the game is “plan your approach to each Mark/Flag” well before getting to it! Ed)
Race result
1. Mark Cayzer and his crew Peter Moore – 303 Sail # 7
2. Mike Blatchford – Liberty # 24
3. Peter Gregory – Liberty # 22
4. Keith Eeles – Liberty # 1882
5. Fay Watson and crew James Thomas – 303 # 6
6. Martin Norman – Martin # 126
7. Malcolm Hill and his crew Mike Cartwright – Martin # 125
8. David Mason – Liberty # 23
9. Steve Farmer – 303 # 8
10. Imogen Fletcher – 303 # 1
11. Nicola Buss and crew Thomas Buss – 303 # 2
12. Tom Phillips – 303 # 10
13. Peter Wagner – Liberty # 21
Well done to all racers and a special thanks to the volunteers who crewed. See separate post for results of the Spring Series 2019 and
onward to the Summer Series 2019 which will start on 8th August.
Wasn’t my best day for racing, unfortunately I was on the wrong side of one David Mason which pushed me up to mark C… which is great if you don’t want to have weed around your keel & rudder, but not so for the lack of wind!!!!!!