I must admit to having throughly enjoyed this evenings race, and probably also to being completely biased, as you'll see. Weather wise it was a fairly gusty and shifty breeze probably about the top of F3/bottom of F4, but there were some reasonably serious bands of more breeze coming in. Course was a bit unusual, maybe even controversial -  good length beat, a reasonable length reach which was probably smack on for the spinnaker boats, a run come very broad reach depending on what the wind did, and then, in place of a short reach back to the start a beam reach out to the side of the course, tack round a mark and then another back to the start... With the amount of wind about these reaches were really too close for the spinnaker boats to pay, but the two of us with high performance singlehanders were rather licking our lips...

An experiment going on was that Gareth Griffiths and Paul Wright-Anderson who are pretty much safe first and second in the series respectively had swapped boats so Gareth was in Paul's Laser (with std Laser rig, not the big Rooster sail) and Paul was in Gareth's Solo. I fear I didn't see much of the other starts... at the fast boat start I was just planning to reach down behind and up underneath some unsuspecting soul when to my suprise a canoe sized gap opened up right by the committee boat so I went for the sails... for a second I thought I'd overcooked it but there was no second gun and I found myself at full speed in clear air and right at the starboard end of a starboard biased line. More luck, I fear, rather than skill.

Predictably Carl Mayhew (RS600) and I (IC) were second and first at the windward mark and Carl took the lead on the reach... We proceeded to blast round the course with happy grins and clouds of spray, especially relishing the two beam reaches at the end of each lap. I could close on the beat, but the 600 (and Carl!) was just too slippery on the broader downwind legs. I remember thinking that CJ was pretty well placed when we caught his Solo, and Gareth was going great guns in the Laser: some distance ahead of Kevin Pearson (Laser) which is something that wants a bit of doing in any circumstances.  Graham Potter (Albacore) was the last of the earlier starters that we caught so he was going pretty well too.

Results: well every dog has its day, and this was definitely the one for the fast singlehanders. Still, I've written often enough about it being a Solo evening or whatever, and I think very rarely about it being a great evening for the style of boat I sail, so what goes around comes around I guess. Carl won by something over a minute, and I was second, getting on for three corrected minutes ahead of the next boat, which as I'm sure you can tell, I am quite pathetically pleased about:-) Gareth Griffiths' 3rd in the strange boat was still an excellent performance, and Mike Curtis (with James Curtis tonight) also had a decent result in weather where the 400 doubtless would have appreciated a bit more weight hanging over the side. Graham Potter took a good 5th and Kevin Pearson 6th. The personal handicap - well, I fear I won that. Nick Marley's second in his Vareo was an excellent result on a course where he must have been very limited in spinnaker use. Carl took 3rd, Chris Smith 4th, Ian Hamilon (RS400) 5th and CJ 6th. Here are the full results.

Series...  As I said above, pace DNDs or anything silly, Gareth and Paul are safe first and second. For third place Mike Curtis leads Evan Cairns by 0.1 points, and Mike Storey has a mathematical chance of beating both of them.  In the personal handicap John Smith is half a point ahead of Ian Hamilton, and I reckon these two must take the first two places. Similarly Dave Baldwin is 0.9 points ahead of Chris Smith, and only these two can take third... Could we see some match racing next week?

Oh yes, worth mentioning the reason I'm so absurdly pleased about the result with the Canoe. Its to do with goal setting. This is something I strongly recommend to everyone learning to sail, and believe me I am still learning to sail the Canoe... Work out a set of goals that you want to achieve with your sailing, enjoy checking them off as you come to them, and give yourself a little celebration: I buy cakes for the office! The goals can start really small and work up. The first one with the Canoe was "sail a whole day without capsizing"! The current one is "win a Wednesday race on the water" which I still haven't managed, but "place in the top three on handicap on a Wednesday" was the next one on. You can, and should, start very small with your goals. "Not finish last" in a club race is a nice starter, then you could work up to say "beat someone who's been sailing for several years", or "finish in the top half of the fleet". "Beat Dad" is a  good one for teenage sailors, if only because you can enjoy the mix of pride and chagrin on his face when you do it [grin]. Then perhaps you can work up to open events if you desire. "Finish every race at the National Championships" is a very worthy one, especially as I bet you'll find you finish a fair way up the fleet by doing so...

Two weeks ago I was bemoaning a stale-flat-beer sailing evening. Last night was hot, sunny and force 3: looked good to me. Unfortunately in conditions that looked great for our respective boats Carl M and I (assisted by Jamie Mayhew) had to drop out to run the race... Whilst setting things up the wind had clocked round from almost S to about Sw, and showed some tendency to want to continue doing so. To give us a bit of room for manouver we dug out one of the open meeting marks and used that for the leeward mark and set it some way upwind of the bank. With sunset around 8:30 only about 45 minutes were available for the race so it seemed advisable not to set to long a course. What we picked was something I've mused about in public on these pages in the past - a beat, a run back down to the middle of the reservoir then a broad reach and finally a shy reach back to the start. A lower case d shape... The idea being to get the reaching legs in the best wind, and a shy enough last reach that kites wouldn't necessarilly pay to give the singlehanders a chance to save their time. So the leeward mark had to be a reasonable way upwind of the mark to make the reach shy enough. Comments on how well this worked would be welcome.

The wind was varying of course, no way it will do anything else at the end of a long hot day, and the starts varied from moderate to excess port bias. Sorry, honestly it was square when we set it... Holiday/championship season has set in, what with Studland week and Topper Nationals on, and we didn't have the biggest of turnouts. CJ got away with a mid line port tack start in the Solos: goodness knows how, but he did it very nicely in spite of lacking a watch. The Lasers tended to take the port end and tack off: Kevin Pearson judged it nicely at the pin. There was also some disagreement: I didn't see the incident, but results are subject to protest,, leaving us with the interesting challenge of finding a PC for a race in a series in which nearly every regular sailor in the club is involved and is thus an interested party... The fast fleet split - Mike Storey went left at the pin, some of the others right...

As they came back down the run CJ was leading everyone in his Solo, but Kevin Pearson had already gained a lot of ground in the Laser, with Rob Petitt following at a discrete distance... Most people seemd to get some nice breeze on the shy reach on this lap: Kevin seemed to come storming across, and, even more so, Dave Nunn in his 600 seemed to really be hammering across... There was some brave kite flying by some of the spinnaker boats, but it was really too shy to pay. In any sort of breeze some spinnaker boats can set the spinnaker on a closer reach than it will pay - if you're heeling over and struggling to keep the thing set then you'd be better off sailing flat and two sail. Something to consider if your kite handling is sharp enough is to complete the gybe and start the leg off with the kite and then drop it part way when the angle to the mark becomes shy enough for a real maximum speed two sail reach, but you will need to be able to drop the sail without having to go down to a deep reach for this to work...

 On the next lap Kevin seemed to have a very decent lead at the bottom of the run, but didn't get much wind on the broad reach and Rob P and even CJ in the Solo cut back his lead again. There seemed to be a good deal of place changing, even within classes: I think I saw the second group of Lasers in three different orders on three different laps... On lap three, in spite of some inadvertent sail washing, Dave Nunn had taken the lead in the 600 and the leading bunch looked to be having a decent enough sail that we gave them another lap., splitting the fleet about half way back where there was a suitable gap. Rob Pettit overtook Kevin Pearson on this la, so I imagine Kevin is cursing the extra lap, and Rob not...

So results: as I said these are subject to protest, Laser 168842 versus Laser 195226. Richard Barker took the win with his Phantom, Rob Pettit 2nd, Kevin Pearson 3rd both in Lasers, Mike Storey 4th in the EPS, Dave Nunn 5th and Cj Cavallari 6th with the Solo. In the personal Harry Phelps won in a Feva XL, Ian Hamilton 2nd in the 400, John Smith (Laser) 3rd, Richard Barker 4th, Dave Baldwin 5th in a Laser and Dave Nunn 6th.
Series wise the top 4 in the scratch series were all absent, so no major changes. In the personal handicap Ian Hamilton slipped back into the lead ahead of John Smith.

Well, overcast, dull, dropping wind as we got there: it didn't look over promising... Race team set a quadilateral with a good length beat, a broadish reach, a run, and a shy reach back to the start. It wasn't always like that on the water as the wind was anything but steady, but you get the general idea... The breeze perked up a bit once we'd got out there and I guess it was top of Force 1/bottom of Force 2: certainly enough wind to race in without it becoming a lottery.

The wind was swinging a fair bit though: I lined at the pin end just before the Solo warning, and it was very heavily port biased until halfway through my test run when it went square... The slow fleet had a fairly square line with a bit of starboard for their start, the Lasers - lots of Lasers this time - started on a line with massive starboard bias, and the fast boats started on a squarish line. There were shenanigans at the Laser start and even suggestions that one sailor should have sailed a 720 rather than doing a 360 back round the commitee boat to restart, but I guess it was felt that the net effect was much the same and noone felt particularly aggrieved... I managed to be OCS on the fast boat start... realising I was going to be over with about 5 secs to go and no room to do much else I dumped the main in order fall out of the back of the line and go back... then there was one gun on the start... after about 5 secs there was no second gun so I grabbed the main again - and then the second gun went.  Oh well...

The race... Graham Potter led off the slow fleet boats in his Albacore, and seemed to get a good bit of a lead at times. Gareth Griffiths and Paul Playle were never far behind in their Solos, and on the last lap Gareth managed to get ahead... The Lasers were having a good old battle, and at times it felt as if there was a solid wall of them in front of you preventing any chance of clear air. This was especially the case at the windward mark where the port side of the course generally seemed to be favoured at the top of the beat, leaving the choice of no wind because of lasers or no wind and in the wrong direction on the clearer side of the track...

Rob Pettit managed to find a way out of the road block his colleagues were creating, and was first Laser, whilst both Mike Curtis (RS400) and slightly later Carl Mayhew (RS600) managed to get through, Mike taking the lead on the water during the last lap. I guess an idea of the concentration of Lasers is given when you consider that 6 Lasers and three boats fron other classes finished within about two and a half minutes from the second Laser, and in those conditions that was not a huge distance on the water.

So results... Who's suprised to hear there was a Solo 1,2 from Gareth and Paul? Not many I suspect. Mike Curtis 3rd place was pretty good in the circumstances. Rob Pettit took 4th after getting ahead of his colleagues, whilst Paul Wright Anderson took 5th in his Rooster 8.1. The extra sail area hadn't got him through the proper Lasers, but it had got him into them and the 4 minute later start did the rest. Kevin Pearson (Laser) took 6th, the first of the pack...

The Personal handicap went to Tom Swithinbank (RS Feva) , whose normal steady progress probably doesn't get the attention it deserves... Harry Phelps took 2nd in a Feva XL, Paul Playle 3rd, James Curtis, making a rare Wednesday appearance in a club Laser 4th, Uncle Mike C 5th, and Mark Phillip 6th in a Solo.
 

Series... well Mr Griffiths can, unless I'm mistaken, start clearing a space on the mantlepiece already because unless he has a brainstorm and starts accumulating DNDs or something I very much doubt anyone can catch him. Paul Wright Anderson is well placed for second, but is very catchable. In the personal handicap, in spite of scoring a discard, John Smith has slipped ahead of Ian Hamilton.  I can't remember the last time Ian wasn't leading the personal handicap on Wednesday evening - June 2010 or something... Anyone's game yet - wise not to discount Alistair Smith, who despite plummetiing down the series this week after having to count a DNC still has the best average points of anyone. So who's away when?

One of the things that makes our sport a lifetime activity, and not something that is all too easy to get bored with after a year or three, is its variety. And of course the weather and its variability is a big part of that.No two legs of the race course are ever quite the same simply because the wind is different every time. And sometimes you get what we call real champagne sailing, with bright sunshine, good breeze, everything sparkling. On the other hand every now and then you get what one could only call stale-flat-beer-of-a-kind-Eddie-would-never-let-near-his-bar sailing. It all helps you appreciate the good times even more.

So, as you might have guessed by now, last night failed to sparkle. If you could ignore the insidious faint drizzle and the glowering gray cloud cover then there did appear to be about enough of a breeze to start a race, and a race duly started. There were a few people in different boats... Paul Playle was desperate to get some sailing hours on his new Solo before it goes away to Salcombe, so as he was on duty entrusted her to Paul Nunn for her first race start, having missed the start on Sunday, which was launching day. Carl Mayhew was sailing with son Jamie in an RS200, so that was both of the regular 600s out of action. Course was a quadrilateral - in fact pretty much rectangular, which was intended to be beat, beam reach, run, beam reach.

The wind had dropped some by the start sequences, and the Solos were, I reckon, barely halfway up the beat by the time the fast class started 6 minutes later. The wind had been dropping, and continued to do so, so progress wasn't easy... The first bunch round the mark got clear of the rest, but the reach, which had broadened, was nothing put painful. Round the next mark the intended run was probably another beam reach, but it was dropping all the time. This leg was enlivened by a practical demonstration of some of the subtleties of naval architecture. The average dinghy has a fine bow and a broad stern, the stern providing much of the stability. If, for example, you send your crew to the bow to sort out a spinnaker snag, and then go forward yourself to assist then all the part of the boat that gives stability is out of the water, and the boat is liable to fall over. This demonstration of the fundamentals of naval architecture applies just as throughly to multiple Wednesday evening series winners as it does to the rawest beginner, and this was very adequately demonstrated.

The last leg turned out to be a beat of sorts, and a decision to terminate the race at the end of it was very welcome... Results here. With a light turnout and several of the leading parties missing I don't know that this one will have a major impact on the series. Dave Nunn took Paul's Solo to a win in its first race, which wasn't a huge suprise in the conditions. Paul Wright-Anderson's second in the Roostered Laser was very good in the dropping wind from the last start and helps him in the series, athough he really needs wins to catch Gareth... Graham Potter took 3rd in the Albacore, Tom Howard 4th, using a full rig Laser, Rob Pettit (Laser) 5th and Clare James and Lucy Gibson 6th as the best RS200. The conditions meant that handicaps were't making that much difference, and the places in the personal handicap were almost identical, except that Ian Hamilton took 5th and Rob Pettit dropped out of the top 6.