I think the dreamers turned out to sail yesterday.  We have had fairly constant rain for a few days, and it was a bit wishful to think the day would be any different, given the forecast.  Even driving there didn’t give much hope until driving over the top of the Drummoyne bridge… was that a bit of blue out in the distance?… and did the mizzle stop?

So, the faithful arrived – 13 devotees – with dry conditions, but rather brooding – and a bit of positivity arrived as well – it looked like it was going to be a good day.  That is how it turned out.  It wasn’t until the last race that the rain returned.

The perception on the deck was that we had a SW breeze, but DAC’s weather station says we had a dead south wind during our sailing.  We actually sailed with some west in the wind on the water.  Wind speed up to 6.5K with gusts to 15.7K and temperature up to 21 deg.  Sounds pretty good.  The water was flat all day, but the gusts sorted you out if you were not careful.  The problems occurred at both the top mark and the bottom mark where the winds just went a little crazy, and either stopped or drastically changed direction.  It caused pileups that sometimes took a while to sort out.  That gave us all a little food for thought approaching each mark.

B sails came out with 1 or 2 C sails to start, but we all ended up on B’s.

The course was similar to last week, being on the western side of the deck.  The start line was set further down the course, so our volunteer RO/scorer Mick Costa complained he couldn’t align with the start line to call those over, but he did it anyway to the chagrin of those he called out.

With everyone’s cooperation, we sailed 10 races – well done!

When I look through the score sheet, it looks like everyone finished highly at some stage through the day.  That is really encouraging for us all.  We had a few hook-ups, and repairs to sort out, but we all finished on the water.

Race winners were Phil Stevenson and Noel McPherson 3 races each; Graham Brown  2 races, and Martin Thearle and Phil Hetherington 1 each.

Winner on the day was Phil Stevenson on 18 points, Graham Brown second on 19 and Noel McPherson third on 20 points.

There were some interesting matchups through the results with Lew Verdon, Rob Lowndes and Geoff Lucas finishing together; and Philip Hetherington and Tim Alexander and also Narelle Derwent and Peter Hirschl.

Judy Evans finished between groups, and Trevor Bowden had gear problems until Graham sorted it out for him.

Attached are the results sheet and the update Club Championship sheet.  Brian is now in recovery mode, and has put together the score sheets for us.

Our next sailing will be the much favoured handicap racing next Thursday 4 June.  Weather forecasts will be sent out early next week with the notice of race.

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