Arrived at Bewl yesterday and the sun was shining and there was a good westerly force 3-4 blowing with 13 knot gusts. Could life get much better? Yes it could!! I was the fourth Fifteen down on the slip to rig but then more and more arrived. In the end, 12 of us made our way to the start line for the first race in the new series. What a sight! And, yet again, another Fifteen crew, Chris and Glynn, were tucked up nice and warm in the race-box running things for us. A good long course giving us two beats, two runs and broad reach with the inevitable holes and wind-shifts that we have come to expect of Bewl.
I had a particularly good view of the fleet as they made their way down the first beat to 7 as, when I looked to sinc my watch for the start of the race, I found that the battery had decided to give up the ghost which resulted in me being even more behind the line than usual when the gun went. Still, I’ve not used that excuse before and it’s a long time since I came twelfth but it was worth it just to see so many Fifteens on the water at one time. But I would still like to have 15 Fifteens out before I relinquish my term as fleet captain. How about next Sunday?
Mike and Jamie yet again set a blistering pace and soon took the lead with Paddy and Dan having their own duel for second place. It was difficult to sort out what was going on in the rest of the pack but some of those that I would normally expect to see at the front of the fleet were, this week, struggling towards the back. The shifty winds really making a big difference to positions depending on where you were on the course and the problems had by some in dropping their spinnakers was also loosing them valuable places. Mike was the winner of this race by a clear margin with Paddy second and Dan third.
The second race, over the same course and run back to back, resulted in the same finishing order but this time, with Mike well out in the lead, Paddy had managed to break away from Dan early in the race leaving Dan and Neil trying to close the gap but never quite making it.Good news
Too late for some I know, but the trees on the other side of the road to where we park our boats, and which have caught out some unwary owners with disastrous results, are to be felled. Alex, the club bosun, with the help of some of the site’s rangers are to take them down sometime soon when time allows but, at the moment no date has been fixed. To prevent the possibility of damaging any of our boats, Alex will carefully move a few boats that could be in the way replacing them after the work has been done. However, it should only affect a few at the lower end of the run.
Keith
