Greetings members,
Yesterday was the end of the 2023-24 season as Polly reminded us yesterday, and as he also reminded us, next Saturday is the start of the 2024-25 season. What a marvellous club we have that does not allow us time to forget our fellow members names during an off season. The RO was Graham Parratt assisted by myself, and we were both quite happy to be running the race rather than sailing because the lack of wind. Despite only a 1 lap course, some heats were taking 25 minutes to complete, so congratulations to the sailors and race committee for not falling asleep.
For the race committee, we were interested in looking at the rig set ups for these very light winds, we saw variations from tight rigs to loose rigs, in fact, to the extent we didn’t think boats should be competitive, but there was not that much gain or loss overall. Now these results show who are the masters of light wind sailing, even though it was a Mark Foy start, some of the early starting boats still held off the later starters once they were caught. Applauding time; well done Tony Taylor who was consistently near the front, as was Chris Stricker, but Mike Inns showed how consistently good placings are the way to go, 7th was his worst placing, and because there were only 5 heats sailed, there were no discards.
Now to commiseration awards. Mark Cornell, a new member, has just purchased J 161 and did quite well in the first heat, but owing to an unknown faulty battery, the rest of his sailing was forcefully aborted……..but Denis Rump is sorting all that out for next time.
I am pleased to report the behaviour stakes were not transgressed, and I should mention the weather was absolutely beautiful, apart from no wind tsk, tsk, and it seemed as if most of Christchurch were visiting Hagley Park.