Elstead Cutter 22 April
Dear All,
For the third club event in a row at Abbey Meads we had a fantastic day yesterday with plenty of wind from the south which made exciting sailing off the wind. The really warm sunny weather made the lake really sparkly to match some of the racing. The usual crowd were joined by Peter Stollery, who was delighted to be able to try out his new boat UPFRONT in A, B and C rigs and Nick Royse sailing his CRAZY TUBE FREE like the rest of us in either A or B rigs. The latter were necessary when the wind made it uncomfortable to use the tallest rigs at the end of the morning. Whilst the wind was mainly southerly like both the previous ALE events there was a bit of south-westerly in it during the afternoon which eventually caused us enough frustration to stop racing mid afternoon when the area in front of the Western control area became too calm. The total of 15 races were sailed with 10 of them to count for the trophy.
The event for the Elstead Cutter was completed at lunchtime when Peter Dunne had to leave. This was a handicap event and Peter improved the most against his handicap and won the trophy again with a positive score of four percentage points. Peter had made a fantastic job of cleaning this magnificent trophy and so he can enjoy the fruits of his labour for another year. The results are attached.
Peter Stollery used his C rig in the afternoon racing and despite it looking very short and small won most of the races mainly through his skilled sailing. He didn’t win the last race and gave Nick Royse, still in A rig, the chance to score a win. Peter reckoned that this may be the only time he will be able to try out this rig on his UP before the Worlds in Germany. However the way the weather is going it could be a repeat of the preparation for the 1992 Marblehead Worlds on Long Island, New York where light winds were also predicted and in every single big event leading up to it in the UK there were strong winds. This led Peter and I to practice at Elstead Moat which is surrounded by trees and not renowned for much wind, whilst Martin Roberts and Mike Weston sailed in the early hours of the morning under car headlights to get some light weather tuning practice!
Apart from the ALE event on Wednesday 3rd of May, our next event at Abbey Meads is the MERMAID trophy, which has been moved to the summer as the final practice event for the Marblehead World Championship in BIBLIS Germany. This decision was also to use the best of Abbey Meads Lake which has no weed in the summer to attract Marblehead sailors from Three Rivers and Hampton Court who usually do have this problem. Please find attached the Notice of Race for this event and we would appreciate early entry via the MYA online entry system. Martin Crysell has offered to be the Race Officer and Alan Viney and Peter Dunne have volunteered to help him. This NoR is hot off the press and will be sent out to Marblehead sailors everywhere and the websites in due course.
Finally, there needs to be a change in the programme as the GAMES event set for 3rd of June is when many potential participants are still in or travelling back from the Worlds. GAMES 3 at Abbey Meads has been moved back a week to Sunday 10th of June. See the revised A4 programme attached.
Cheers, Roger