Vane 36R Woodhouse Trophy at Fleetwood Model Yacht Club
by Tony Wilson 25 Jun 2018 12:40 BST
Vane 36R Woodhouse Trophy at Fleetwood © Tony Wilson
Four skippers, four boats and the Woodhouse Trophy was up for grabs
Peter Whiteside was away in France but had left us in the capable hands of race officer and scorer our faithful Eric Watkinson.
A bit of a flutter to start with as the clubhouse had all skippers either derigging or just attaching their B rig as we had a nice moderate wind straight down the lake and only slightly biased. Darren had kindly come along to pole for John and also David Foster, Bob and Ian were there to help, so we all had individual assistants. Peter J had his usual yellow boat and Eddie was sailing a brown boat similar to the one that Tony had borrowed from John. There must have been a great supply of Red Lead paint in the seventies as there are numerous yachts all looking very similar.
Eric had decided six legs at a steady pace was all that would be needed for a none too hectic competition. Three legs before lunch and the remainder and any sail offs in the afternoon.
First up was John against Tony and they had both decided to go straight for it without any warm up. While John just powered up the lake beating from side to side, Tony's boat was dithering. Thinking because he had wound in both of the turn screws in a couple of degrees too much, it was sailing a couple of yards and then going into irons. Maybe that warm up would have been a good idea. Eventually by the time we arrived at the top of the lake, David had noticed that the jib line had come free from the boom clasp. We didn't have to pole off once on that first beat leg; surely you must get extra points for that.
We managed to reattach the clasp with a spare piece of Dyneema and we were good to go again. Not wanting the boat to go along the far bank the vane was so I thought set to bring it over to the Skipper. Poor David had the boat drag along the side, as by now the mainsail had also come adrift from the riveted corner. Eric to the rescue with his repair kit and a piece of glass-reinforced tape across the corner along with a new eye was riveted back in place. Good as new. John had won that leg too.
Peter had been sailing against Eddie and had overtaken Tony and won his first leg. Eddie won the return.
Leg three and four, Tony was sailing against our expert Vane A boat sailor Eddie. Eddie struggles with the smaller Vane, although has been doing very well with the smaller Dragon class recently. Eddie lost both legs and Tony was now on the score board. John lost the return leg to Peter, but that was to be the only couple of points that he would lose all day.
After lunch John increased his lead over the pack by hitting another couple of home runs over our Eddie. Peter lost the beat leg to Tony as Peter just couldn't time the boat to sail a short distance across before returning, while Tony was efficient.
Down to the very last leg of the day and it couldn't have been a finer finish as Peter only just pipped the post by literally a few inches and it was certainly an exiting last leg to watch for those that had already finished.
John won the day followed by Tony (still improving) with Peter Jackson in third. John was happy, as two of his boats were in first and second place. We had had a nice relaxing day in fine weather.