With a light wind forecast, the race officer kept us ashore until 3pm allowing for a great morning of tea drinking and catching up with old friends,, and maybe the odd beer with lunch sat out in the sun! (Was that the reason I missed the Code flag L at the club?)
With about 7 knots of breeze it was tricky sailing conditions and with a building tide, we all had to be on our game. Some were on it more than others. Nigel Wakefield and Emily Saunderson continued where they left off after the practice race and led from the start steadily extending little by little. Rounding for a second time they set off on the run, closely followed by Alex Davey, and Guy Davidson, but Ed and Sophie Smith followed by Chris Kameen and Matt Read set off on the reach as per the sailing instructions for course E… Hmm code flag L… Fortunately for us we only lost two places… but an important lesson learned.
For the second race, we had a line start and with a strong tide across the line, the line was evenly split. Nigel and Emily started at the pin and we started at the boat, as we thought the tide would be slightly less in shore. Surprisingly we only just crossed tacks at the top of the beat, Nigel annoyingly sneaking round in front of us and Alex Davey, with a building tide, this was a crucial tidal gate, and those placings were held until the end. Further back there was some great pandemonium as multiple boats converged on to marks with super strong tide.
Results after day 1:
