Well you are all very feeble and missed out on a superb day of sailing yesterday. Wind and sun!
The cherubs arrived to a glassy Corus SC. Some feeble types with a preoccupations with windpessimist chose to stay at home, but the remainder knew that the combination of the seaside location and the long south facing slope above the club often means local breeze. Even if they didn't know that they might have remembered last year: Proper breezy with a forecast of the square root of no breeze.
Corus is a friendly club where the welshcakes cost 25p for two. Among its other virtues are a grassy rigging area and flat water with relatively uninterrupted breeze.
While rigging, catching up on news, and welcoming four new faces to the traveling fleet (Son and father team Greg and Dave Fudge and husband and wife team Andy and Jill Peters) - obviously the rest of these teams were welcomed too, but I suppose we started with the faces because those werre the most visible and identifiable parts - the wind filled in.
The first race started on time with a straightforward windward-leeward with an interesting twist: The leeward mark was set a few boat lengths upwind of the committee boat and the finish line was set from the boat to there. That way if laps were miscounted no-one would lose out. It also meant that the startline can be moved while people are still finishing, reducing the gap between races.
It was side-sitting and some playpen work for crews while trying to make sense of the patchy wind. Everyone except Atum Bom had the bias on the line correct and started at the left. Difficult to interpret shifts had converging boats deciding who was going to pass in front of whom, but top sniggling skills had Andy and Jill Peters in their new Ellway 5 'Yosagi Jojimbo' (it's a cartoon samurai rabbit, obviously) first at the top. Downhill it was pressure-seeking and guarding the centre, but no-one caught Yosagi. In second was Atum Bom (it's Portugese for 'good tuna', needless to say). Sorry - can't remember who was third but it could have been Shiny Beast, followed by Slippery When Wet and Argument Clinic (It's a Monty Python sketch, as you all know)
The second race was a little bit more pressure, and Atum Bom grabbed a lane of pressure on a favourable angle upwind to lead at the top. It didn't last - and a lap later it was Yosagi again, pullling away with superior angles downhill.
In time for the last race it was more breeze with twinnability for the lighter crews. Upwind pace was even now so many boats arrived at the top together. After a split, where boats elected for space from each other to be able to really open the gas, it was more simultaneity at the bottom before, after a hitch aboard Atum requiring a hasty mainsheet retie, Yosagi got away again.
After the racing, in near-perfect wind and fabulous sun, Cherubs blasted until everyone was suitably knackered and yearning for curry.
Evening activity was going to Porthcawl, where inexplicably there was a convention of Elvis impersonators ("Come and see the real Welsh Elvis - tonight!"), and eating curry before campability in time for the next day's instalment.
(Sadly team Atum Bom (Paul Croote and Will Lee) had to go home due to a double-deal of family and work commitments, so tomorrow's write up will have to be by someone else)
