We welcomed two new boats to the fleet. 4054 Simon and Andy plus 3674 the Two Richards
15 Entries were treated on Easter Saturday to a force 3 gradient SSE wind in SUNSHINE. The Golden Dolphin was pressed into service to avoid beating into the lee of Brownsea enabling great courses and well organised separation of the fleets.

In the first race we had 3 laps of Wytch/Inflatable. Graham and Ben led around Wytch followed by ourselves with Crispin and several others close behind. At the leeward mark The Scraggiest still led closely followed by Crispin/Steve and Ourselves (Geof/Dave) discussing overlaps. We managed to get in phase with the shifts to lead the next lap but obsessed with the idea of a shortened course fell out of phase for the last beat when Crispin started to stamp his authority on the event followed by Bob/Phil then ourselves.

A fairly short turnaround was followed by a Triangle Sausage course with laid windward mark, Chris Somner and Morris Lane. The wind was starting to trend left and became more shifty. Bob/Phil managed the left up the first beat to hold a comfortable lead at the first mark followed by ourselves and Crispin. On the second beat the order was always under threat from the shifts with Richard/Alan twice looking like they had passed us until the wind shifted back again to leave the order unchanged to the finish.

On Sunday a fresher force 4-5 Easterly with starts from the platform meant potential carnage at the first mark as all roundings on Sunday were to starboard.

First race was course 108 from the course book with Nord Homes to starboard as the first mark followed by a run to Hutchins. There was the last of the flood running to make decisions more interesting. Crispin/Steve led at the first mark and proceeded to steadily increase their lead - although never ‘safe’ till the end. Behind there was a decent amount of place changing with Patrick/Aly, Graham/Ben, Ian/Mike and Ian/Michael all looking good at various stages. We managed to recover a lot of ground down the run by doing a gybe set and then sailing for a while without the pole after gybing so that we could unpick the knitting. I think we were third at Hutchins behind 4101 and 3537 (trying to be anonymous with only 3 on the sail). We lost ground up the beat to round RoRo in about 5th for a planing reach to Volunteer gybe broad reach to Hutchins. Back to RoRo where the 2 leaders gybe set onto a run (our course written down had another triangle to volunteer etc so we dug out the course book to confirm we wren correct as we headed to Volunteer). By the time we established that the correct next mark was Morris Lane and we corrected our navigation error we are well out of contention with the finishing order 4101, 3537, 4020.

Despite this being a no discards series, some boats decided that 3 breezy beats were enough for one day and had an early shower.

The rest of the fleet were ’treated’ to a Sausage Triangle course of Windward Laid mark, Chris Somner, Stans. The windward mark was still fairly close to the platform - probably 3/4 of the way to where Wilkes used to be till it was moved a few years ago.

The ebbing tide made the first mark rounding particularly congested despite the slightly reduced fleet with 6 boats arriving at the same time as ourselves. We luckily found a gap to gybe set and run down to Stans where we were behind Crispin who again dominated the race followed by Bob/Phil and others including Ian/Mike. We were the only boat to try to use the outflowing tide in the main channel, only coming inshore to pass through the line. Net result was we caught Bob/Phil port starboard on final approach to mark forcing them to tack and allow us round in second place.

We opted to attempt the impossible by holding our kite after the gybe to Stans which allowed Bob/Phil last while we dropped it and then processed to the finish line.

Przegiving in the club with Thorntons Eggs for the top three

Results
4101
3537
4088
3966
3821
3936
4020
3922
4115
3901
4054
4027
3934
3674