News

Mon 10 Sept

Fat Face Weymouth Open, 8-9 Sept –from Richard Neall

46 boats:
Richard & Sara 10th overall and 1st Silver.
Patch Fillery and Sarah Skerton 29th.
Full results here

Finally a light wind event and with glorious warm sunshine as a bonus! Very exciting for us too as it turned out. Our best result in any circuit event to date, 10th overall and we were lying an amazing 3rd overall on Saturday evening having notched up a 6th and wait for it….a 3rd in race 2. Wow! Now that’s a GOOD drug :-) This was one occasion where we weren’t going to be too disappointed if there wasn’t any wind on Sunday!!!

After an average to poor lap and a half in race 1, it all came together on the last downwind leg, Ronnie lifted up her skirt turned on the turbo and hurtled down to the finish gaining half a dozen places in the light northerly breeze to take 27th place. Mmmm, well the last leg was good.

Race 2 was a cracker. Finally a good start with clear air and continued good speed got us to the windward mark in 2nd , tucked in just behind a grinning Lee Sydenham. Then remarkably we held our place to the leeward mark and were still on the tail of Lee and eventual event winner Hamish Calder at the next windward mark….now hold on…is that a gap to the 4th boat…hey, we might just be in with a shout for our first ever podium finish here….surely we can’t capsize in 6 knots wind…maybe we can run out of wind.... Now we’re gaining on Lee…this is getting mad!! One steady gybe to the finish and we’ve only gone and got 3rd, and look at the gap to 4th….!!! Good game :-)

I mean we didn’t sail any differently, but life really is easier at the front…more please!

Race 3, Uh oh! Going backwards 3 boat lengths back from the line at the start, and really in the poo, not looking good, but being on the right side of the course with a fickle wind and continued good speed we somehow snuck up to 6th by the finish. Result!

Sunday. Race 4. Another really shocking start in the light northerly, not going backwards but miles off the front row with no chance of tacking off early it looked hopeless. But again we somehow pulled back to somewhere in the early teens but this time a bad downwind leg tactically cost us 10 places or so, and with the wind dying away to drifting the game was up. 20th though was a still a nice surprise.

Thank you to a very friendly Weymouth sailing club, a delightful Weymouth town and B&B, and for the Fat Face vouchers we picked up as booty!!

Inlands next at Grafham, 6-7 October.

Richard Neall

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