Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club

Well I thought that was a pretty decent evening to kick off the series with. Given a decent breeze - F3 northerly - it wasn't the night I'd have picked to be in the rescue boat, but never mind... What with picking boats off the windward bank, picking boats off the leeward  bank, delivering late dinner orders to the kitchen and even checking up on the odd capsizee I was at least kept busy...

Week one is of course the shortest evening of the series, so we set a simple short quadrilateral - beat, short broad reach, longish run, short shy reach. The wind swung slightly through the evening and what started out as being just about OK for the RS200s was definitely too tight by the end, as demonstrated by the team that found themselves heading for the lee bank... I was suprised that others were dropping the kite at the mark though, I thought it looked probably worth taking the accelleration round the mark and dropping about a third of the way along the reach... but I wasn't in the boats!

Ian Hamilton's Xenon took an early lead from the first start with Paul Playle first away of the Solos. From the Laser start Evan Cairns was an early leader: I thought I saw him well clear at one stage but may have been mistaken. The Lasers seemed to be up with the Solos quite quickly I thought. From the fast start Dave Nunn's RS600 was prominent of course, but Dicken Maclean and Nicola Groves were predictably well placed, as was Mike Strorey's EPS.

By the time lap three came around Ian Hamilton was still leading the fleet, being caught only very slowly by Evan Cairns and Rob Pettit, who by this stage were having a very good fight to be leading Laser. John Magrath was third Laser and pretty close to these two, just ahead of Paul Playle who was leading the Solos.

Results wise, well see for yourself. Paul "last orders" Wright Anderson just (seconds) pipped Dicken and Nicola for the win, with Mike Storey 3rd, Evan Cairns 4th, Tom Winskell 5th in a 200 and Rob Pettit 6th. It was all very close - one minute covered the first 5. In the personal handicap Ian Hamilton won. Damn, I thought I'd sorted out their handicap! Actually they put in a very decent performance with a respectable placing in the scratch results. Next were John Smith, Chris Smith, Dave Baldwin, Will Scott (provisionally whilst I hunt for data for a peersonal handicap), and Paul Wright-Anderson.

Supper was courtesy of Alexis Villiers, and a pretty good evening I thought. See more of you next week?