Blithfield Barrel Round 2
by Chris Martin 7 Dec 2015 11:56 GMT
6 December 2015
55 boats turned up to contest the second round of the Barrel series at Blithfield SC. The promised weather window was somewhat late arriving, but this turned out to be a good thing as we will see later!
The upshot was that we launched in a solid force 5 from the southwest, quite a challenging direction for the race officer as it's hard to get the reaches "just right". John Lees and his team set a good square line and the both flights got off on the first attempt with a couple of boats black flagged, most notably Tim Male whose Merlin seems to stand out after its recent paint job. This was a cracking race for pretty much everyone, with a number of swimmers particularly at the rather sadistically placed gybe marks. About half way through the weather window started to arrive, the rain started and the wind swung round to the west and started to die off.
The second flight of slower boats did well in this race, the slow last lap taking its toll on the faster boats. Graham Flynn and Adam Froggat from Chase took the bullet in his GP14, with Jim Hunt's OK in second and Richard Burton in third, again in an OK.
Lunch ensued and the drizzle started. The ladies (and Steve) fed everyone whilst we watched the wind die away.
The second race was now a very different proposition. What breeze there was was swinging between west and northwest and dying all the time - no pressure for the race officer! After a short delay following one of the larger wind shifts both flights played ball and got away first time with no casualties. After the excellent conditions in the first race this all seemed rather pedestrian, in fact I can't recall doing two races so totally different in the same day. This the breeze increased enough on the extra lap to allow the fast boats to dominate, Andy Davies and Alex Warren taking the win after their undignified swim in the first race. Second were Rich Adams and Tom Pygall in a Merlin and third were Steve and Gill Leney also in a Merlin.
Thanks to Creation Covers for the raffle prizes, one of which provided something of a "Guess the gadget" quiz in the bar afterwards!
Thanks also to the race team and the galley team, and also to Roy Jones and Keith and Brian Walker who have done the tea/coffee duty and safety respectively on every Barrel day for at least the last three years and probably gone uncredited - we can't do it without the volunteers.
Thanks also to all the visitors, the next round takes place on the 16th January - see you there.
Further details and directions are on the club website, www.blithfield.org.uk