REGATTA

This Open event, in its usual place of the Sunday before Fed week, was well supported with 30 entries. The wind remained reasonable and the day was won by Tim who thus redeemed his self esteem after his gruelling and disappointing time at the Nationals. Unfortunately, he was not able to be presented with the Trophy as Melvyn, last years winner, mistakenly thought that it was presented at our prize giving and did  not bring it back! Hope he has handed it over now!

FED WEEK

The whole week, although sunny and warm until Friday, was plagued with twitchy winds from the north which made racing ‘interesting’ for the 42 competitors. There were several visitors and the fleet was well supported by the harbour clubs - Adam Osborne from Mengham buying his boat 6402 after the Nationals only the Saturday before! He did very well, finishing 11th overall, considering he had never sailed a Solo before!

Monday was very light and variable and people went up and down the fleet like yoyos. Keith Videlo from Frensham, won this with Sarah, who stuck to her guns and went right each beat to lee bow the     tide, in second place and Johnny Rees third.

Tuesday was again light and Ian Barnett took an early lead with various people in second place for short times. However, David Mosely, who correctly took a flier to the left with a favourable shift on the last beat, ultimately achieved this position. He then won a battle with the authorities over whether he had signed out or not!.

Wednesday started to blow up a bit and the heavy weather boys kicked in. The wind dropped a bit towards the end but there were occasional swats of wind which eliminated a few boats. Sarah started to drop down the overall positions from her initial, exciting, 2nd place towards her ultimate 8th! All the races lasted about 2 hours, but this day and the next two seemed very long and hard, and people were coming ashore not a little tired! Barnett was 1st and with Videlo 2nd this set the results for the overall placings.

Thursday  and the promised F 4-5-6 arrived. The wind was still very shifty though and Videlo was the only person on the start to notice, in time, a marked shift to the left. He was a lone boat down at the pin end and was not seen for spray for the rest of the race.

Friday, was a similar wind and the flood this day was stronger. The start line near Dunes was a bit like rounding the Horn and with much delay caused by the RS200s there were a few casualties and several people got cold and came in. Ian Barnett seemed to be about a leg ahead halfway through the race but the next positions were being fought for by our own Nick, Johnny, Melvyn, and Tim.  Rob Hack wasn’t doing at all badly either. New boy  George, in 4704, had some good results on the previous days but not today. And it was not Tony’s week though he had his best result of 5th in this race

All results can be seen on the main HISC site.