Byte Open at Weston Sailing Club

Five visitors joined five locals on a pleasantly breezy Saturday morning for the Weston Byte Open. Three races were scheduled for each of Saturday and Sunday. A triangle/sausage course was shared with the Contenders and this was overlaid with a windward/leeward course sailed by the RS700s leading to excitement at the top and bottom of the course.

Race 1 saw a good start from the whole fleet with Chris Rees easing away up the first beat, he was closely pursued by Mike Radford, Sarah Kirk and John Futcher with the rest of the fleet not far behind. Chris managed to consolidate his lead up the second beat by going left into stronger winds and was comfortably ahead of Mike when the course was shortened with a short reach to the finish at the end of the first run. A tight group of John, Olwen Binks and Maggie Futcher sailed rather high after the leeward mark before heading for the finish, John gybing to get there and in the melee Maggie unfortunately capsized after having a good race up to that point.

The start of race 2 saw Chris doing a turn off the start line after just tapping the pin. Following this he and Sarah went left with John and Mike going right. This time the right side was favoured and John and Mike approached the windward mark with a nice lead over Sarah and Chris. Mike extended hi s lead after negotiating Contenders at the top with Maggie showing good speed to pull through to third by the end of the race.

Chris once again found the right way up the beat in race 3 and established a commanding lead with Sarah in dogged pursuit. By the end of the race Sarah had caught Chris and was only a few feet behind. Mike had made his traditional poor start and had to work hard to keep up with Olwen Binks' upwind speed – Mike just managed to squeeze past Olwen on the final reach to the finish.

At the end of the first day the competition was finely balanced. Race 4 on Sunday would see the discard coming into play and Chris would be in a very strong position with two wins already under his belt. On the other hand Chris was not looking forward to the forecast light winds which would favour Sarah and Mike. Unfortunately the winds were so light on Sunday that racing was postponed and then abandoned and so the competition was decided by Saturday's results.

Despite the lack of wind on Sunday this was a most enjoyable event, including an evening quiz, at a very friendly club. The Byte fleet is now looking forward to the final open of the year at Haversham SC on 19th/20th October.

Overall Results: