Df65 and Df95 Winter/Spring Series Round 5 at Fleetwood Model Yacht Club

Fleetwood DF95 Winter/Spring Series Round 4 © Tony Wilson

Fleetwood DF95 Winter/Spring Series Round 4 © Tony Wilson

Saturday saw the concluding part of the Df65 Winter series. As only 2 events were sailed at the end of 2016, the start of 2017 was included to make up a series. The first one was cancelled due to no water leaving a further 5 up to date, with the best 3 to count.

Although we had seen at least 16 different Skippers, in the end only 7 were able to qualify. Some serious contenders weren't able to make the last race.

The big guns Derek and Tim had had 2 wins each, also Chris Haworth and Mick Parkington had a win each, but not enough to qualify.

Within the club the two Dragon forces combined are leading up into being an army. We must now have at least 30 members sailing one Dragon or the other.

Fleetwood Df65 Squadron Report (by Ken Crabtree)

So here we are again on this foreign lake. We seem to be plagued by S or SW winds, the worst possible. Our marker buoys have been mucked up by the recent gales so much that the only course would be a slalom! Unfortunately we didn't have an Olympic hammer thrower to put some markers in better positions but there was a friendly kayak-er on the lake and he obliged by re-positioning a marker to allow us a reasonable course with a short initial beat. The DF65s were first up. Although A rigs were the order of the day some of the markers caused many a disaster, except to the 'expert' sailors, (how do they do it?) so there were no surprises in the results other than Tim lost one race to Garry!!

Thanks to Eric Reid for scoring for us.

Df65 Winners for the day:

1 Tim Lanigan
2 Garry Benson
3 Chris Chatfield

Df65 Winners for the Winter Series:

1 Garry Benson
2 Ken Crabtree
3 Tony Wilson

DF95s captained by Garry

Being second up we fortunately benefited from the prior 65 racing and also from Bob Jolly for taking on the RO duties. Yet again the 95 offered a maiden race to Peter Chester who just fell short with a second to Tim Lanigan's first of six bullets.

Fleetwood DF95 Winter/Spring Series Round 4 - photo © Tony Wilson

Full race details of this inaugural winter series will be on the web shortly. In the meantime today's first three are:

1. Tim Lanigan
2. Chris Chatfield
3. Peter Isles