Laser Masters Series Round 2 at Grafham Water Sailing Club

Laser Masters at Grafham © Ben Falat

Laser Masters at Grafham © Ben Falat

The second event of the 2012 series took place at Grafham Water SC over the weekend 16/17 June. Saturday's weather forecast was not very inspiring approaching midsummer, predicting strong winds with even stronger gusts and more than likely accounted for the reduced entry. The forecast turned out to be as predicted with an 18 knot mean south westerly wind, gusting 22 knots, measured on the committee boat prior to the fleets going afloat. At least it was not raining.

Two gruelling races were sailed by both fleets (standard and radial), testing the helm's boat handling and stamina. If the wind strength was not enough, there were 90 deg shifts to contend with as well, consequently not a good idea to go block to block for any length of time! At the clubhouse a maximum gust of 38 knots was recorded that might have contributed to Ian Gregory's radial mast shearing off during Race 1. This led to the decision, that as the wind strength was still building, to postpone Race 3 until Sunday.

In the standard fleet, at the end of Saturday, Alan Davis and Steven Macqueen were equal on 3 points while in the radial fleet Richie Bailey was leading on 4 points from Rob Cage on 5 points.

Sunday morning arrived with the wind strength having moderated but still reasonably strong although forecast to reduce during the day. This did in fact happen, the wind dropping to around 8 knots by the end of the day.

Four races were sailed to complete the series with shifts just as big as Saturday and necessitating the course to be reset twice.

In the standard fleet Davis posted four first places and Macqueen managed to stay in front of the rest of the fleet with a consistent two second and one third places.

The radial fleet managed to have two recalls during the day as the wind swung making one end of the line more heavily favoured than the other. Cage managed to score two first and two second places to finish on 8 points with Bailey scoring slightly more variable results to finish in second place on 11 points from David Goddard in third on 25 points.

Overall Results: (overall positions in brackets)