We have the IOM Rankings at Datchet Saturday and Sunday. Seed race allocations are done and HMS is loaded and…. we have new trial on-course windsocks !!
As a first time for us, we shall try and put out live race-by-race result updates on MYA Downwind – see how we go with that !
Weather forecast has perfect Westerly breezes at low to mid teen mph speeds. Should be terrific!! Almost 40 Entries.
If you cannot compete, come along and spectate …or volunteer for Race Team 🙂
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 !!
Datchet hosted the IOM Metropolitan and Southern District Championships this weekend. The Club got a fantastic 2nd and 1st in the brilliant hands of David Lindsay and Craig Richards.
It was a pretty consistent B-Rig kind of day, 10-15mph westerlies, with the occasional rig change to C. The battle was pretty close up to Race 8, then positions tended to open out as they often do as we approached the completion of 13 races. However, we all enjoyed the family battles within Family Stollery and Family Guerrier… which were really close most of the time!
An excellent day too for the Proteus programme – first day afloat for that particular boat. Gosh didn’t it do well !! Downwind it was awesome. Craig did a brilliant job of stamping his authority on the Championship and the boat is looking really great!
Datchet Radio Sailing - Making It All Much Easier !! 