Sunday, 20 October 2002

Today, like last week, was forecast to be windy. Which again did not blow through until late afternoon.

The day started with a bit of confusion as The Whitstable Water Ski club had laid their ski course right through our race course. However, there was notice of this and Andrew Kelly went to the Ski Club to verify their start times so that they did not clash with our own. But, it did make for some interesting races as 70mph boats with skiers on 100 ft lines threaded their way between us. This was a bit un-nerving, especially for the younger cadets of which there were three on the water, each of which voiced their concern of the close proximity of the power boats and skiers. One comment was true "they might know what they are doing, but we don't!"

So, with the moderately variable south easterly wind, it was a day for the mono hulls with Rob Thomas and Bob Taylor dominating the day in the Scorpion. However, William and George in their toppers came 2nd and 3rd respectively in the first race. The second race saw similar results but with James in the club topper having a really good battle with William and just pipped William for 2nd place (what a good day for the cadets in toppers).

The third race saw the wind start to pick up slightly, but there were fewer boats on the water as the cold weather had taken its toll on the cadets who after two races were frozen and the prospect of the 2nd & 3rd races running back to back without a chance to warm up put them off the 3rd race.

Race News 11

Sunday, 13 October 2002

The day promised big wind but fortunately it didn’t reach us whilst the race was on. It was rather flukey conditions with the wind in the southeast blowing 3-4, which made for a very competitive race.

We had 11 boats on the water: 4 cats and 7 mono hulls. Rod Thomas in his scorpion headed the mono hull fleet and indeed took first place overall. His trip to Southampton for a scorpion open meeting paying dividends in tactics and tips picked up (not that he needed any!).

George, in his topper, brought up the tail end of the mono hulls having a close race with the mirror. Their positions changed many times and they were close for a lot of the race. Congratulations to them both for determination in the difficult, cold conditions.

The lasers also had a close race with Paul Baker and Peter Blake tussling for honors and finishing 2^nd and 3^rd overall.

The cats struggled in the flukey variable conditions, but still had a good close race with Peter Barnard and Barry Sheffield swapping places several times throughout the race and closely followed by Andrew Kelly. Pete Bramley and Scott in their Hobie Tiger had an indifferent race with several rig problems on the first lap, but it wasn’t to be a cat day with the first 3 places going to mono hulls.