Greetings all,

Yesterday was a lovely days sailing, and here are the reasons why. The weather was fine, the Rua access road has been graded smooth, there were no swimmers or kayakers in our way, the race committee was brilliant, we had 15 sailors, Murray Pearce supervised and Diane Pearce did her knitting. That was the pros. The cons were; after the nights rain, cars struggled to reach our container across the muddy grass and the race committees dog Cindy, was not available to supervise setting the marks and retrieving them.

Jim Paterson was RO and I was assistant, and after the wind settled to one direction, light though it was, we could finalise the course as 2 triangles with a mass start. I have said it before and I reiterate that profound statement, the fleet has improved so much that the days of a couple of boats consistently marching off in the lead are generally gone, and furthermore, the days of the last boat consistently trailing from a great distance are gone. You will see from Murray Pearce’s photo, the wind is generally on the light side, but of course it would have been much more visible if Murray had taken the effort to snap the photo from the raft in the foreground.

Again the behaviour was good, and again congratulations to Tony Taylor who exonerated missed or touched marks voluntarily……..you sailors need to be aware, there is not much rules breaches happen that aren’t observed by the race committees. I didn’t know who was winner until I sat with my array of technical equipment (brain) to calculate the results and again congratulations to Polly, Al and Glen for podium finishes, but also to the rest of the fleet for the close positioning throughout the heats. Far be it from me to cast doubt and dispersion on these results, but if one takes into account the salutary, majestic, brilliant, consistency of the race committee, one wonders what the results would disclose if they were partaking……..of course I can already see the derision on Glen’s face as he reads this………hrrrummpphhh.

Cheers. Tom A