( Mummy with Baby Ducks give Nigel a Swim-Past )

We had six One Metres with us today, including a potential new member! Phil, Craig, Nigel, Dorian, Richard from the club. Honestly the breeze was a bit light, but there was always enough to go round and we had a blast! Craig was PROing and wisely in these conditions set us a bunch of sprint races out to a windward mark and back. Far enough – We had plenty of fun and all learned a lot.

Doctor Dorian did a couple of amazing IOM tuning clinics in the coffee break, and as one of the happy recipients I can only say how grateful and amazed I was !!

The racing adjourned for lunch and then the Eastbourne victory trio of Nigel, Dorian and Craig put in some serious boat-on-boat tuning practice. As ever with this sport you can often learn more by watching the top personalities than by competing against them!! It was really impressive – lots of tweaking, practice starts, in phase and out of phase tacking and so on. Surprisingly revealing and great to see the two Proteus design boats going so well…. Nigel was especially nippy today !!

The sharp eyed DRS members will notice first our new on-course windsocks, but also the idea needs an upward tweak to get the sock tails out of the water. PH is on it !!

(Our Datchet Heroes from Eastbourne – left to right Nigel, Dorian and Craig)

Honestly when these guys are concentrating you can feel the vibrations in the banter !

Nigel – just tweaking the spoodler adjuster

Dorian in front – Craig and Nigel in pursuit!

Windsor in the distance, on-course Windsock has a sense of humour

Next week the IOM Rankings event – two days, 35-40 entrants !!