Skippers were greeted with a forecast of 20 mile an hour winds gusting 30 from the west. 20 Helms had pre-entered but on the day 18 arrived starting at 10 o’clock, not before people enjoyed bacon BAP‘s and egg and bacon rolls to start the day.
Roger Clifford was RO along with the usual group of Eastbourne club members and wives to run the event for which the skippers thank them enormously.
Racing started at 10 o’clock and continued at slick pace as you can see from the number of races completed. It became a war of attrition as boat and electronic failures arrived regularly during the day.
Rig choice was between B and C initially some using A- but it very soon became apparent that B rig was the order of the day until later in the morning with the gusty wind becoming even stronger most opted for C rig.
After an excellent lunch break with hot soup French bread sausage rolls and hot dogs were the order of the day as we all warmed up.
Racing resumed at 1:45 and continued until 4 o’clock. During the
afternoon the wind abated and we opted to go back to B rig which most
people finished up with. At some point the wind was even light enough
for people to go back to an A minus momentarily but it soon became
clear as it’s was just too much sail area.
23 Races completed and the top 3 on the day were within 10 points of
each other. Ken Binks took the win, closely followed by Alex Cory and
Clive Cockayne
Full results are shown below and we almost achieved a fourth discard but the clock just beat us.
Thank you to Roger Clifford and all his team along with the catering
wise made it a superb day to start the season. Thanks also to the
Eastbourne club for once again providing a great day’s sailing.
Thanks to Dave Pickett for the use of his photos. Move pictures available on his Flickr Page
