It was a beautiful hot day and attracted 9 entries, but the wind was not as forecast with too much northerly and not enough easterly and it was frustratingly variable in strength. We opted to sail from the south bank, which generally gave a windward leeward course, which was beneficially reset to the north-east wind after the lunch break.. There was much frustration particularly at the windward mark in the shadow of the trees, but 5 of the 8 competitors won races, with the eventual winner of the event, Barrie Martin, and Simon Collyer visiting from Alton Water both winning 4 races.
Simon Johnson, from Hampton Court and Simon Collyer were competing for the ROF, Roger’s 1 One gram Flag offered in the every Notice of Race for this series to be won by the leading visiting competitor. Although only winning one race Simon Johnson was the most consistent finishing with score of 38 to finish 2nd in the event, whilst Simon Collyer after a brilliant start finished with a score of 46 to finish 4th in the event, as you can see from the scoresheet below. A few images were captured by Roger in Races 12 and 13 & Barrie at the prize giving.The club had planned a workparty to cut down some of the vegetation, but it was frankly too hot to consider this after the 14 races sailed by the 2 o’clock deadline and putting the dinghies & gear away in the clubhouse. We did inspect the west bank before the event and reckoned that this will be a problem if we had to sail the HALFPENNY Trophy from that control area. The promised grass cutting on the south bank hasn’t materialised and we will have to put up with rather long grass if we operate from south bank, which now appears likely. This appears in Barrie’s photo of the lake on the pic page.
