Yes many thanks to Dave and Lara for the floor space. The racing was a bit of a blur but from my memory this is roughly what happened from our perspective.
The course was a complicated outer loop windward leeward with a reach out and back to it. The bottom reach to the finish was a particarly 'interesting' white sailer in decent breeze. The Saturday started with a postponement waiting for the wind. When the wind arrived it quickly built to 12-15knts.
The first race started with most Cherubs on the line except EJ who had put an unwanted reef in their sails by severely shortening the mast. I'm not sure who lead around the windward mark but it wasn't us. A broad reach followed to the outer loop. Here was where matters got interesting. This was for two reasons:
a) the outer loop was tiny, about a minute downwind with the kite up
b) the outerloop was set right in the middle of the slow boats course, so full of toppers, mirrors and GP14's.
Result, frenetic activity, many near collisions and plenty of swimming for all. In between all of this a halfway decent race for the lead developed between us and Riot Van. Shiny retired twisted and Ronin and Badgers were somewhere behind. We won, Riot Van dropped back a bit (I think stopped for some swimming) I think Ronin were 3rd and Badgers 4th but could be the other way round.
By race 2 the wind had built to 18-20knts. Long wait between races during which we and Riot Van practiced for the sychronised capsizing event to be inaugurated at this years Nationals. Course still the same, mirrors etc still present. Racing was again tight for the first couple of laps until capsizes spread the fleet out a bit. Badgers used their weighty experience to keep the sails pointing upwards and had a clear win. Ronin and us swapped capsizes with Ronin generally in front until their weight undid them and the board decided it had enough of Ross bouncing on it and cracked. This left us free to finish 2nd with Riot Van a fairly distant third. I don't think anyone else finished.
The course was re-set for race three giving a better outer loop. Only three cherubs started this race, the wind was still fairly pokey at 15-20knts. Badgers had another clear win, Riot Van kept their sails dryer than us to finish second. We capsized more in this one race than in 4 seasons of RS200 racing and finished an even more distant third.
Sunday dawned to the plants in Daves garden rustling around. 'Be windy at the club' said Dave and he was right. The breeze quickly built so that by 10am there was a sea of small white horses across the race course and a shrill noise from the rigging of the yachts in the marina. We made an early decision to sail up the M3, bits of various damage made the same decision obvious for all others except The Badger who seemed willing to tempt fate and race. However the constant wailing of the rigging even un-nerved Tim and the Badger eventually also stayed ashore with the rest of the aysmmetric handicap fleet. So the overall results based on Saturday are by my reckoning:
1. The Badger
2. The Samurai Rabbit - Usagi
3. Riot Van
........after than I'm not sure so perhaps Dave had the official results and can post them.
