July Get Racing at Draycote Water Sailing Club

Sunshine brings out novice racers

The July Get Racing at Draycote Water SC took place in excellent conditions. The winds were light and shifty early on, but, with the sunshine, brought out 13 sailors keen to get more experience of club racing.

The pre-race briefing emphasised being near the start-line in the three minutes before the gun and this made for some closely contested jostling as the 8 boats figured out their ports and starboards before crossing the line.

The briefing also covered mark rounding and in particular the rules that covered the standard port rounding at the windward mark. When the course came through on the radio, it was of course a starboard rounding so the rules applying had to be hastily explained to each boat as they prepared to launch.

After the start with most boats level pegging, the wind went very light and there was nothing between them as they slowly approached the windward mark. Fluctuating and shifty winds caused problems for many of the boats as they found themselves stalled and head to wind without understanding why.

Two-thirds of the way up the beat however, the wind became more consistent and the faster boats, the first Laser with Adrian and the RS200 with Carla and Lydia, pulled away quickly.

The other two Lasers with Steve and Josh were near the back round the windward mark but had a good battle up to the third leg, before Steve overstood the mark and let Josh through. Steve could have got ahead again by not blindly following Josh to the wrong mark but, by the time both had realised, Josh had got away. He continued to make good his ground especially on the reaching legs and overtook most of the others to finish second, crossing the line one second ahead of the RS200.

The wind was more consistent for the second half of the race and all the boats were able to put on a good turn of speed and enjoy the breeze.

Get Racing at Draycote Water Sailing Club is intended to ease novice and junior members into the main club sailing. It runs on the first Sunday of each month in the summer with an on-shore briefing and their own start at the end of the club start sequence.

Overall Results:

1st Adrian Roberts, Laser 2nd Josh Davis, Laser Radial 3rd Carla Fickling & Lydia Roberts RS200 4th Sophie Fickling & Oliver Fickling H12 5th Adrian, H12 6th Mike Jewkes Ruth Jewkes, Laser 2000 7th Rory Stewart, Tera 8th Steve Jeffs, Laser 9th Guy Jewkes & Dasha Sutton, Feva XL DNF