Friday 2nd October – Commodore’s Cup Dinghy 2
A light NNE and glorious sunshine greeted 44 dinghies for the second event in the Dinghy Commodores Cup Series. It remained light and shifty for all three races. Big shifts up the beat created a big game of snakes and ladders. The breeze was also up and down which meant race 1 was shortened for the Optimist fleet and race 3 was shortened for lasers and the fast fleet.
It was great to see more optimists in both cadet and main fleets. Fyn Britton, having competed in the cadet fleet last season claimed his first race win in the main fleet. When the breeze is fickle, consistency is king and Charlie managed that with a 2, 2, 2 scoreline to win the optimist main fleet. Nadine came second with a win in race 1 and Noah third with a win in race 2. All very close indeed!
Laser 4.7s saw two new faces on the podium: congratulations to Valentina (3rd) and Haizea (2nd). Ben won the day and closes the gap on Luke in the series.
In the Laser Radials, day results reflect the standings in the series (Athos 1st, Eve 2nd, Lucy 3rd). On the water it’s very close and great to see youth and adult sailors competing side by side.
In the Laser Standards it was a tough day for John Woolcock who only missed 1st place twice all last season but found himself under attack from two very talented youth sailors: Tayte and Josh. When the results were in, Tayte was third, John second and for the first time in a long time a youth sailor won the Laser standard fleet. Congratulations to Josh.
Slow fleet was won by Tom and James in their Snipe followed by the Weta of Jason Freeborn and then the Weta of Keith Hutchinson.
Fast Fleet podium was a clean sweep for the Cats but the 49er of Chris Seymour was only 90 seconds off top spot in race 2 and race 3. Third on the day was series leader Brian sailing F16 Falcon who still counted two bullets. Second place was the F18 of Chris Le Borde and 1st on the day was Dan Kilsby sailing a Nacra F16 and collecting a very consistent scoreline of: 2, 2, 2.
Next Dingy Com Cup: 30th October
Saturday 3rd October – Dust Remover 2
The second and final practice race day. A good 8 knots of breeze from 280 to 300 degrees. This meant that the Race Committee were limited to the length of the course by the World Islands. Therefore the 1 lap races were only 30 to 40 minutes duration.
All 6 fleets had good turnouts and started in pairs to cut the start sequence down by half. The Multis, Division 1 and 2 sailed a trapezoid course whilst Div 3, Cruiser and Club Class sailed a triangle. The reaches helped to cover the ground quickly enough and it looked like the sailors were enjoying the fastest point of sail.
This seasons IRC certificates have started arriving ahead of the season starting in earnest. If you are still interested in racing in an IRC Class please get in touch ASAP.
Next event is the real thing! Commodores Cup Keelboat – 16th October.
