Greetings CMYC members,

Before I write another word please be aware!!!! Next Saturday there will be no club sailing because we are hosting those dinosauric, oops, those fine majestic EC12 craft in their South Island championships. No doubt all will be enthusiastically craning to witness the magnificent spectacle of these craft creeping, oops, gliding swiftly across the course, so the first heat starts 9.45am.

Now for yesterdays racing. The wind was generally from the south but during each heat it came from all directions including heavenward and I wouldn’t be surprised, if from below as well. Plus, it came in every wind strength imaginable from 0 to 25kms, so my congratulations are genuinely applauded to those who handled it so well as to be elevated on to the podium, Peter Bradley, Chris Koskela and Barry Bissell. I should mention that during racing Barry mentioned to me that he was all over the place and needed to concentrate hard to keep his boat moving, well that certainly happened, or, the rest of us were further awry.

Congratulations to our race officers Ron Campbell and Allen Anderson for setting a good course despite the tricky conditions and keeping things on track. I especially want to thank Allen Anderson for proving that I am not a complete idiot by experiencing the exact same problems with the computer as I did last time and making the fleet sail 2 heats with no results, heh heh, of course the computer battery going flat doesn’t help.

It would be pertinent to humbly draw attention to the absolute thrashing that J 276 received from its worthy rival J 150, I feel no other words need to be written on this matter, but would also humbly observe of the great number of DNF’s the EC12 class experienced, again no other words need to be written.

One puzzling aspect yesterday is, how does Polly start on MF 120 seconds and still win a heat? Another interesting aspect yesterday was the first club appearance of Murray Pearce with J 205, and, when the boat broke down there must have been at least 6 fellows all fixing it, so much so that no one partook of a cuppa so Ron went home with 3 unopened packets of biscuits and the unopened milk.

I am pleased to announce there was no aggressive behaviour yesterday…….well done sailors.

Tom Arthur   Sailing Master  SMCYMC