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The RG65 circus came to Bournville and what a cracking do!

18 skippers from the length and breadth of the country, Keigthly, Birkenhead to Portsmouth and most places in between. To say Bournville was surprised and delighted was an understatement, there is a burgeoning fleet of RG’s growing there and after seeing how these cracking little boats perform it will grow again. So win win for all.

The wind was a nice top suit breeze from the far end of the lake allowed RO Peter Moore to set a course that used the lake fully in a two lap figure of eight configuration.

There was a good spread of the current designs, Scurry’s, Sledges, Syth’s and the odd Pocket Rocket a mix of carbon and glass hulls, most had swing rigs.

Using the long race format Peter got in 12 races during the day with not too much time out.

John Tushingham lead the way to come out the winner on the day, Clive Cockayne was second, Mark Dicks third and Liz Tushingham fourth.

The racing, as always, was tight throughout the fleet and it was excellent sailing across the board. It can all be wrapped up with that very apt but totally applicable “A jolly good time was had by all” and Bournville is looking forward to the circus coming back again next year

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.

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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