RC Laser TT at Ardleigh Sailing Club
by Dave Fowler 23 Aug 2017 14:50 BST
19 August 2017
This is a new venue for the RC Lasers. With the class being newly setup at the club, it was more a 'come and have a go' with 3 spare boats going, and 6 entrants to the TT. A bit disappointing as they missed a great sailing venue with good steady 'C' rig breeze.
After a little bit of boat tuning and rig tweaking, the racing got under way, sailing a simple port round triangle course. A bit of an optical illusion with the large, very bright green windward mark gave us all problems judging the distance to get the correct side of it.
Newcomer to RC Lasers Robin showed his past RC sailing in other classes by nailing 80% of the starts, and taking one of the bullets, getting quicker as the day went on. John (1008) ran off in the first race to get the first bullet of the day, but was up and down the rest of the races. The only other bullet taken from winner Dave was by local Roger White, who was overjoyed with his performance on the day (it's very hard calling yourself over the line at the start, but being fair is the name of the game).
Also from the local sailing team was young Amy. This was her first time not just racing an RC Laser, but she has only just finished a dinghy sailing course. She was very pleased that she wasn't last in four of the races, more down to learning the difficult technique of making a RC Laser go upwind quickly, which she started to master by the end of the day, leading the fleet to the first mark in one race, until that optical illusion got the better of her, and missing the mark... doh!
The day ended with 13 races sailed.
The next TT is at Ayr Bay on the 24th September, see www.rclaser.org.uk
Overall Results:
| Pos | Sail No | Skipper | Club | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | R5 | R6 | R7 | R8 | R9 | R10 | R11 | R12 | R13 | Pts |
|---|
| 1 | 840 | Dave Fowler | Kingmill | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 12 |
| 2 | 1008 | John Armstrong | ILS | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 30 |
| 3 | 14 | Robin Bloyie | | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 31 |
| 4 | 90 | Roger White | Ardleigh | 3 | 3 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 36 |
| 6 | 908 | Nick Hodshon | Gosport | 4 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 41 |
| 5 | 48 | Amy Brown | Ardleigh | 6 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 62 |