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Wednesday 1st July

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  • Another easterly this week. Moderate, Force 2ish I guess and most certainly without such vicious gusts and characterised last week, but was it ever shifty... You could see lanes on the water, and gusts almost wandering about with no rhyme or reason. Boats close togther could be in quite different wind. A day to play the percentages and make moderate choices... Gorgeously warm of course - its been the warmest week of the year so far if you aren't reading this in southern England so don't know...Anyway we had a long course tonight, a sort of unwrapped Olympic with a long beat, a very broad reach, a beam reach across the reservoir, another pretty long beat and a run ack to the finish. Or at least that was the plan... With the wind swinging as it was life was never that simple...

    The wind chose to give the slow fleet a very port end biased start. Gareth Griffiths and Tom Wilson were early to show - and indeed Tom kept close to Gareth for around half the race. The line was more normal for the Laser, and by the time the fast boats started it was in anything staboard end biased... Your editor thought he got the best start, but I tacked no more than 20 yards earlier than both the Curtis brothers in RSs various, and some 20 yards ahead and somehow that had tuned into some 200 yards behind by the time of the next tack as a different wind stream took them higher and faster... Mike Storey, who'd taken a port tack start and gone right, at times looked 100 yards ahead and then as much behind again as the wind swung one way and the other up the beat. This was the tale of much of the race for most of us to be quite honest. The winners of the first beat were undoubtedly the Curtis navigated RS300 and RS400, and they took a handy lead on the downwind section, follwed by Mike Storey, whilest the rest got something of a lull. Meanwhile Gareth in the Solos was seeing John Smith, followed by John Reay already very close on the tail radar, and yet from there they never seemed to get much closer...

    As the wind swung for (and against) for different people there were some spectacular winners and losers Mike Curtis in the RS400 found that the runs tended to require little or no gybing, which put him in a considerable advantage, but on one lap Gareth Griffiths got a really tasty shift that pretty much got him to the windward mark without tacking, and in the end that was probably the defining moment (well minutes) of the race. Gareth won by about a minute of corrected time, with Mike Curtis second, Peter C third and John Reay (Laser) and Tom Wilson) Solo sharing the points for 4th on a handicap tie. Fiona and Rob Fardon (RS200) took 6th with a steady race. Tom Wilson's tied 4th place unsuprisingly gave him another race win in the Personal Handicap, with John Smith (Laser) 2nd, Fiona and Rob 3rd, Dave baldwin (Laser) 4th, Mike Storey (EPS) 5th and John Magrath 6th.

    Series wise, well, it really is everything to play for. Mike Curtis is 1st, counting two wins and three seconds. Gareth Griffiths is 2nd with two winds, two seconds and a third, and Peter Curtis 3rd, also with two wins, two seconds and a third, and the duty evening average points separating them. As the average points include discarded races the odd down the pan result may become very significant indeed. Arthur Phillips, who might possibly be regretting having an evening playing with the foiling Moth (it wasn't really breezy enough) also has two wins, and is in 4th, with John Reay (one win) still in contention in 5th, in spite of having to count every race he's attended so far... The personal series is curretly led by Tom Wilson, with a possibly generous classification. John Smith isn't far behind, followed by Fiona and Rob and then Graham Potter. Alistair Smith (Topper) is currently counting a DNC and has dropped some way down the list but also has plenty of good results.

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