Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club

Intimidatingly windy as folks turned up at the club - white horses everywhere and regularly F6 on the anenometer. It dropped down a fair bit for rigging time, maybe calming a couple of slightly unsteady livers, but built a little at launching time. The race was I guess mostly F4, sometimes 5, some pretty big gusts but only moderately shifty.

Course wise we had beat, almost square run, short beat, and shyish reach back to the start. The shy reach was often a lot of fun...

Rather a disappointing turnout of Lasers tonight - normally the breeze is good for getting the Laser fleet out, but several of the usual suspects were missing... The fast start was firstly entertained by the unusual sight of Peter Curtis capsizing shortly before the gun, but to his opponents disappointment he managed to get in and sorted in time for a reasonable start. HAving a less reasonable start was your editor. I was planning to duck transoms and go for clear air on port, but the time I cleared the last transom I was looking good to ram the committee boat amidships. This didn't seem to be a good idea, so I had to take their transom too...

Amonsgt the slow fleet Gareth Griffiths (Solo) was very close to Graham Potter (Albacore) for a lot longer than Graham was altogether comfortable with. Mike Storey (EPS) was very well placed among the fast boats - indeed ahead of Peter Curtis (RS300) for several legs. Ken Duffel (Merlin), was well placed for a while, but they dropped back with spinnaker problems. With the way the wind was coming in bands it was one of those evenings where you could get lucky and fly down an offwind leg, or alternatively be unlucky and trundle down looking at spray flying on boats in front of or behind you...

There was in the end suprisingly little swimming in the race. although a few pretty close calls. Results wise Peter Curtis won, Mike Curtis was 2nd and Gareth Griffiths third . John Smith took his laser to 4th place with Mike Storey 5th in the EPS and Arthur Phillips (Solo) 6th. John Smith won the personal Handicap from Fiona and Rob Fardon with Mike Storey 3rd and Arthur Phillips 4th.