Island Barn Reservoir Sailing Club

August. Well, that typically means a depleted turnout and this was no exception. A typical English summers day: it was overcast, gust F4/5 wind, and heavy drizzle by the middle of the race. Wonderful. Still it wasn't raining for rigging time, and as I write this, with the lunchtime races in progress, its stopped again.

It seemed to be a very scattered race, looking at it from the sidelines, and there were a few retirements. I wasn't able to get to the club in time to see the start (or race of course), but there seemed to be a fair few tales going round the clubhouse after the race, so I think it waspretty entertaining. Some heavy gusts about. Course was [oh bother, its been taken down!] err, I think it was beatreach run, short one sided beat, and another deep reach back to the start.

Peter in the RS300 took an early lead, as one would expect, and wasn't to relinquish it, even when the bear away after the short beat was a little hairy... James Curtis, sailing a demo RS Aero was second round most laps, with Mike Curtis coming through to third after a couple of laps. A little further back Messrs Griffiths, Playle and Ampleford were having a good race in Solos, with Chris Smith hanging on in his Streaker.

Results are here. Peter took the win, with the three Solos next, and then James Curtis in the Aero with a handicap I grabbed semi at random (but anything reasonable would have given much the same result). Chris Smith took 6th. Ben Sharp took the win in the personal series (assuming he had a Radial rig up) from James Curtis, Paul Playle, Ian Woods, Kevin Seebaluck and Joe Dunn.

On the RS demo weekend, my understanding from the people I've talked to is that generally the Aero seems to be preferred to the RS100: folks seem to have felt the latter to be unsatisfactory upwind, especially for those who've sailed the RS300 much (which is arguably a very hard benchmark).

If people would like to provide more feedback on the boats then if you have an account on the club website you should be able to edit  this page, or alternatively you could email me (use this form if you don't have my email address), and I'll put it up, credited or anonymised as you prefer.