Musto Skiff Open at King George Sailing Club

In cold winter days some of us take it easy and enjoy a nice break from sailing, others carry on no matter what, but we all dream about summer when sailing becomes what it is loved for - sheer enjoyment and fun. However, this theory didn't seem to work last weekend. In spite of a universal forecast that should give a little hope for every sailor - windy Saturday, and not windy Sunday, two King George locals - Mick Keates and Luke Draper had a chance to shake hands to only 3 more guests: Benjo (Ben Schooling) and Serega Samus from Datchet and Matt Holden from Locks SC.

Well 5 boats is already a fleet. And with lots of advantages: less crowded start line, no queue for showers, a podium place for a mid-fleet result. To the embarrassment of the MPS fleet we were beaten in numbers by 505 folks who happened to share their own Open Meeting with us. They turned up in a staggering 6 boats!

To add some excitement to the event, the race officer came up with an ingenious course configuration (just to avoid collisions between two crowded fleets) - some fancy looking figure of 8, that took some of us (Serega) a couple of races to stop going in wrong directions. 4 figures of 8 in the first, the windiest of them all race, lasted over an hour, were wisely reduced in half by the RO. This decision was greatly commended. Races 1 and 2 were completely dominated by Benjo despite his prehistoric main sail which contained around 10 sq. m of patches.

But in the third race he had to fight all the way to the finish to get rid of a "sticky" opponent Matt. The only way to do this was to jibe to starboard in front of Matt to send him to a swim. Some called it "I needed to jibe to unwrap my kite", but Serega who used his chance to jump into second position, was certain that this was a clever "Team Datchet racing tactic trick" nicely executed.

If conditions in day 1 were meant for heavier guys, day 2 forecast was light sailors' delight - 3-6 knots. Probably, for this reason the fleet size was decremented by 1 with Matt having preferred a cosy bed to a miserable drifting. With the wind playing all sort of tricks you could find in the books the second day wasn't a piece of cake for Benjo anymore. He even hoisted his racing sail this time and had to fight so hard for the first two races to get his clean set of bullets that he didn't have any energy left to carry on the last race (well, we'd like to think it was the case). This time it was Luke, who was stepping on Benjo's heels all the time and took two second places.

So the top spot was up for grabs in the last race and 3 remaining competitors fought furiously for it. Serega led for most of the first half of the battle, then slightly overtaken by Luke on one of countless shifts, he made a fatal jibe hoist to get into a hopeless and endless hole having lost hundreds of meters in a couple of minutes. Luke was happily continuing his course in a handy gust, but the cleverest move was made by Mick, who banged the right corner downwind and grabbed the only bullet that didn't belong to Benjo. Luke was second again and Serega took respectable third that allowed him to just hold on to his third place overall by just one point from the "Last Race Flying Mick".

As a summary we had two very different and challenging days of sailing, very well managed by the Race Officer and his team, and enjoyed very relaxing and friendly family-like atmosphere in a cosy sailing club. This was my first time at King George's and I'd be very happy to come back there next year.

The trip was well worth it.