WWS 5 Report by Roger Stollery 2023-11-16

We had a great day’s racing with a ‘record’ entry of 8 for these series events and 16 races were sailed in sunny blustery conditions, which gave some exciting racing on the off wind legs.

Roger welcomed David Cole, who was taking part in the series for the first time and he was presented with a ROF to help him see and react to the inevitable variable winds.

Before the briefing competitors were shown David Coode’s marvellous 19 page 1992 MYA League Results booklet, which was promised at the AGM; a marvellous piece of work David carried out over many years. 

A simple windward leeward course set with the start line becoming the leeward gate and a windward mark with a spreader. The rising ‘tide’ a metre above recent levels caused a problem because of the length of the mooring lines that needed adjusting. Despite this delay in the start of racing 10 races were sailed by lunchtime when the leaderboard was topped by Barrie Martin counting 5 first places. 

Keeping track of the wind variations on the beat was really difficult because sometimes a gust coming down from above made your on port tack instantly become starboard tack, without you doing anything with the rudder!  This variation often made stalling a problem if you weren’t quick enough to react to the change, because the strong gusts were briefly overpowering the A rigs. Approaching the finishing line was both exciting and frustrating; exciting if you were at speed chasing the boat in front and frustrating for that boat not getting a small puff just to get you over the line.

Also downwind the strongest gusts briefly caused broaching or going out of control, but the speed was exciting and the boats and spray always looked very impressive highlighted against the black gusts!

Martin was very unlucky at the start because in a collision his switch turned the radio off and gave him a big score. The switch problem was repeated in race 13 and he then acted as the race officer for the remaining races. To challenge Barrie there were 4 other race winners, but in the 4 final races he was in a class of his own, as you can see from the results.

Look forward to even more enthusiasm for the next event, WWS 6 on 29^th of November.