RC Laser Winter Series at Fleetwood Model Yacht Club

First day of racing in the RC Laser Winter Series at Fleetwood © Trevor Bell

The forecast had for the rain clearing by lunchtime and a steady brisk wind of about 16MPH from the West, which was looking good for the first RC Laser event of 2020 at Fleetwood.

You would have bet on a combination of B and C rigs to be used all day and it was the B size sail that everyone seemed to be fitting on initial setup. A couple mentioned that 10 minutes earlier you would have even been thinking 'A' sail.

The usual dilly dallying to get boats and course sorted and everyone was now set to start on the first race with......... wait for it. 'D' rig. Was Tony going to be brave enough to leave that 'C' on. No, he joined the rest as the boat started to dive on the two minute countdown.

Triangle, Sausage was the instructions with a gate at the windward mark. On the first Triangle lap, we were to take the left side of the gate leaving it to port and then to a spreader before running to the leeward mark and sailing anticlockwise. The second lap, use the gate to either direction, run down and with a clockwise turn to beat up to the finish.

First day of racing in the RC Laser Winter Series at Fleetwood - photo © Trevor Bell

Derek won the first race and he was one of 10 Skippers sailing for the day, which is an impressive turn out for just a club event. And better still the rain was nowhere to be seen all day. With a two lap race it gave you plenty of time to get back in the race if you messed up and most of us did at least once on every race. They were good size races but usually taking not more that 10 minutes as we had more than adequate wind.

Race two and Shaun had rudder trouble. It slipped a tooth on the servo or something to put him out of that one, which John Sharman won. John won race three also, then Shaun won one and Tony snatched race 5 leading up to lunch. Shaun's morning wasn't going as good as it normally does, but still plenty of time to catch back up.

We had completed 5 races up until lunchtime and Derek was 5 points clear of John and Tony.

First day of racing in the RC Laser Winter Series at Fleetwood - photo © Trevor Bell

Two rig Tony was again playing around with his 'C' rig just before the start call in the afternoon as it did look like it was slightly less. But then again it was still 'D' rig. The direction was more or less still the same and we returned back to some great racing. At about race 7, Shaun and Tony finally went for a bigger rig.

Race eight was the one where Steve Mattison got well clear of the pack from the beginning and lead the whole way by a good margin to the very end. A few more appeared with their 'C' rigs leaving just John and finally Steve.

Derek was still leading on the score board by loads, even with 2 discards, but it was the four last races to weigh heavy on him as he had to leave us for the day. Shaun had race ten, eleven and twelve in the bag followed very closely on that last race by our Peter, who had now finally come onto song.

The day had turned out better than expected with some close fought battles, especially those few minutes after the start and up by that top gate. The top three positions were separated by just two points bringing Shaun back to the top.

Thanks to Trevor for very efficiently scoring without hesitating at the end and to Peter for course setting and boat duties.

Results:

1 Shaun Holbeche 24 pts
2 John Sharman 25 pts
3 Tony Wilson 26 pts

First day of racing in the RC Laser Winter Series at Fleetwood - photo © Trevor Bell