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Thursday 26 July 2012

22 boats racing on a Wednesday night!

It was great to see 22 boats out last night during the Wednesday night racing. My favourite comment of the evening was 'Your not sailing the Titanic!' when the no water call was made 8 boat lenghts from the mark.

John made the start an interesting one with a downwind start. There were some confused faces on the water, but it was a nice change and I got a good start for once.

It was also good to see new faces as well as the wiser, the Pico's and club Laser have certainly had their use this year. If anyone wants to have a go at racing who has not done so before then speak to Tim, Neil or Andrew after the next Tuesday training or email racebuddy@yeadonsailingclub.co.uk. Its not too late to get racing, the season continues until December.

Wednesday night racing continues until August 22nd, the start times will get earlier towards the end so check the calendar. Saturday and Sunday racing goes on until the end of October and the Sunday Frostbite season starts in November.

The Adult training series will start the first Saturday in September and run throughout September. There may be the option to complete your RYA Level 1 or 2 at the end. If you are interested in the training and particularly the RYA certificate bit then please get in touch with Tim Burnett (tdburnett@hotmail.com).

It would be good to get a second club Laser up in operation, perhaps with a radial sail option. If anyone has the bits to donate then please let me know. We have a hull, just missing everything else.

Push the Boat Out



Last weekend was another great success with people making a real effort with Push the Boat Out. The winners of the best dressed boats were:

Leeds Sailing & Activity Centre, representing New Zealand - ingenious use of cotton wool to dress up the dog as a sheep!
Jo, Harriet and William, representing Jamaica - Never seen so many pegs holding a boat together.
Neil & Rachel, representing... erm sailing - Nice use of Marine flags, looked very pretty.

A special award goes to Howard for the oldest relic on the water (I referring to his Union Jack Flag which looked to have seen action at Waterloo).

We had a very nice letter of thanks for the Model Boat Club for helping to organise the event. They had a fantastic display and members really made an effort with their boats.

Visiting RYA Regional Development Officer Adam McGovern was impressed with our event and the members efforts.

Sunday Racing - Thornton Trophy 6 Race Event

The July theme of doing things differently continued on Sunday 22nd July with six short races being run for the Thornton Trophy with the best four results to count. Despite the different format we still had 16 boats raring to have a go at winning the coveted trophy.

After some initial confusion over the start time due to the blue card saying 1.30 and the notice and Dutyman saying 2.30 all was resolved with a 2.30 start and with six races to fit in, the afternoon was set to be a hectic one. The sun shone and the breeze blew at a nice force 3 with a several gusts up to force 4+ making it all very interesting.

After a short briefing to explain the revised sailing instructions with the slow fleet starting first for a change and only two minutes between starts the fleet soon gathered on the start line keen to be off! The first start however had to be abandoned and re done due to some confusion in the start boat (Howard cocked it up!). The fleet had no such confusion and at the second attempt everyone made good starts despite the, at times, windy conditions, Matthew Foster sailing the club Pico on his own and with the Jib was clearly a man on a mission and sailed a fantastic race, in fact winning all three initial races despite being pushed hard by Tace Morgan and Paul Horton. Leading the charge in the fast fleet were Phil and James Hartley in their Graduate but even they were no match for the Pico and Toppers who made the most of the early clear wind. The break for a cuppa after race three seemed to be very much appreciated especially by those who had done some swimming.

After what some thought was an all too short break we were back on the water again for the final three races. Just to prove that it was no fluke Matthew once again notched up three first places despite having a brief dip to cool himself down! Tace and Paul were still pushing hard to finish 2nd and 3rd overall with Phil and James in 4th place overall and the first of the fast fleet boats. Jo Lee managed a creditable 5th in her Mirror despite being single handed in the tricky conditions and Tony Langley finished sixth overall in his Solo. Several boats capsized some several times perhaps the most surprising being Dennis and Jo in the 5th race. Dennis was heard to say that Jo had got her jib jammed in but it was noted that Jo was not around when he said this! (sorry Dennis). The award for the highest number of capsizes goes to Harriett Lee whilst the award for the longest period swimming goes to Sean Bastow with our apologies for not being able to leave the racing for long enough to give him a hand up we were however keeping a watching brief for emergency signals!

It was very noticeable from the committee boat that most of our fleet were starting very well all day however by the end of the afternoon the starts were very close indeed and all the practice seemed to be having the right effect. The full results are shown in a separate results sheet with this report.
Report:- Howard Chadwick on behalf of the Race Team:- Helen Nicholson, Ian Morgan and Glenis Burgess.

The full results can be downloaded here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ajr7pguZ0BiwdEpDTUR0dE02MW94XzhwZHFsczRPV1E

This Weekend

This weekend sees the last of our July intermission with a trophy races, and opportunity to stock up on more silverware.

Thanks

Tim B

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