Wednesday Night Laser Series 03/08/2006

Another entertaining evenings racing despite a bit of a fickle westerly wind, which caught everybody out a few times over the course of the evening.  The racing was pretty close and over the course of 6 races everybody won at least one race.

David Graham acted as OOD and set a fairly tricky course, which depending on what the wind was doing at any particular moment, meant that sometimes it was possible to sail directly across the line from the leeward mark and sometimes it wasn't.  If you were sailing a Dart of course you had no chance.

Tom McCardel took advantage of Peter's absence to have a sail in his boat and promptly showed everyone the way home by winning the first two races, though was gifted the first race by myself after sailing too wide around the last mark allowing Tom and Isla to nip inside and beat me over the line.  A schoolboy error that would not be repeated.. or so I thought.

The wind increased sufficiently for Andy to get the Dart over the line in first place in race 3, and I eventually managed to get it right for race 4.  Normal service was resumed in race 5 with Tom winning that one.

Race 6 was the main series race of the evening, and was a 2 lap triangle/sausage course with a finish round the leeward mark and back over the line.  Competitors were required to cross the start/finish line on the first lap, but David neglected to tell anyone until after I had sailed past it.   Despite sailing back round the committee boat (though not apparently across the line)  I luckily  found myself on the right bit of wind and managed to get back in front by the windward mark, and  approaching the leeward mark had opened a reasonable lead .  However possibly confused by approaching the mark at a funny angle I managed to turn a fairly simple manoeuvre into a hopeless gybe/tack combo and sailed ridiculously wide....  I don't think Tom and Isla could believe their luck

Nick 03/08/2006