Sixteen Sailors came along for our Scratch Event yesterday.

Summer was well and truly here with a temperature in the high twenties. A gentle Nor’Easter appeared at race time and slowly developed during the afternoon. The breeze ranged from 4 to 14 with the odd gust to 22 Km/Hr. (2 to 8, gusts to 12 Knots).

The above called for “A” sails for the first half with “B” ‘s following.

Good to see Peter Burton on deck, down from Belmont to enjoy some sailing, and he certainly did!

The day’s sailing was won by Peter with 2 firsts and 3 seconds giving a score of 18 points. Following closely was Phil Stevenson on 21 points. Two firsts and 2 seconds and all finishes in the front half of the Fleet gave Phil second place. Graham Brown secured third place on 26 points. A win and 4 places was pretty good, but just not quite enough on the day.

The scores spread gently down the page with places well shared and some countbacks to resolve a couple of ties.

The scoresheet again shows that each boat is very competitive, on your day, anything is possible.

There was quite a bit of debris afloat. This was mainly leaves brought in with our first Nor’Easter for a while. We all sampled some at one stage or another.

It was interesting to have one’s boat almost stop dead in the water. You’d lose steerage and then from being in irons, to take off again, clean.

Race winners were Peter Burton 2,  Phil Stevenson 2, Graham Brown 1, Peter Close 1, Robin Tickner 1, Noel McPherson 1 and Rob Lowndes 1.

Peter Burton took the honours for the day to win 1st place on 18 points.

Phil Stevenson finished in 2nd place on 21 points.

Graham Brown finished in 3rd place with 26 points.

The Club Championship now has Robin Tickner in front from Graham Brown and Judy Evans, sharing second place.

It is sad to say farewell to our long term Sailor, Peter Close #214. Peter is moving to greener pastures to the North to enjoy “retirement”.

Peter has had many successful sails with us over the years, winning the Club Championship in 2021. It has always been a pleasure to compete with him, if you could stay with Peter, or even pass him, you were doing pretty well. Peter shined in his role of Race Officer, his humour always set a great atmosphere.

Best wishes Peter, from us all.

Our next Sail day is Thursday 29^th February for a Scratch Event.

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