Saturday 29 April.  Spring result 3.  We were treated to a steady South Easterly, gently building 10-14 knots, over a moderate flood all afternoon, in preview Maytime bright sunshine.  Commodore Gary set a quadrangular course, GDZS.  Was it a 3-lapper?  I didn’t hear any dissent: all seemed to keep calm and carry on.  With wind in this direction, it often pays to cross the main channel early and approach Glovers on the starboard lay line.  This day, Mary (ILCA 6) made a wiser choice, reasoning that there was better angle and pressure on the left-hand side.  She stormed out of the North Channel to lead around mark 1, from 7s Gordon on the left and Chris, Simon, Andrew, Donald out of a pack on the right.  Sail area inevitably helped the 7s get away on the run from Our Kid to Brindle.  Chris carried on his previous weekend’s form and technique and stretched away on the reach to Stans.  Simon, Donald and Andrew kept up some duelling up and down wind and stayed in that order almost to the end.  From Andrew’s perspective there seemed to be very good racing occurring throughout the fleet, with places being fought for on all legs.  Mary kept her lead of the 6s to Stans, from Robbie, Roberta, Gayle and James.  Robbie put his nose ahead on lap 2 and got away on lap 3, from Roberta, James, Mary and Gayle.  Ingress of FFs and RS 200s probably added to complexity up and down the fleet on the last lap.  On the final drag from Stans to the finishing line, Simon had to contend with Donald’s legendary persistence to defend 2nd at the finishing mark end.  I guess that they must have been blinded to the door left open (or was it reluctance to take on the literary pleasure of this report) for Andrew to pip Donald for 3rd at the favoured platform end.  David, Col, Gordon and John were next.

And Chris won hands down.