Sunday, August 12, was a ‘glorious’ day with long spells of sunshine, but little wind. As to be expected when Dave ‘the wind God’ Plester is in charge, it’s usually a case of all or nothing. In this case, dropping away to nothing after the fleet of 13 keen sailors had set sail.

Most of the usual suspects were out on this lovely morning and it was also nice to see some more new recruits from sail training in the shape of Joe and Charles in the RS Feva and Rhys in a Topper while Hywel switched from his usual singlehander to take out the Laser 2000 with Thomas crewing

There was quite a competitive start with a few extremely keen boats appearing to be over early, but the race officers were quite lenient and all drifted away, after a sluggish start the light winds seemed to favour Paul and Julia in the RS 200 who led for the first three legs until the wind dropped away on the last leg of the first lap allowing Mark in the RS Aero to pull through to take the win from Paul and Julia then Ed in his RS 100.

While the wind had dropped on the leading boats, it disappeared almost completely on the rest of the fleet who were marooned out to sea and it is to their great credit that most of them stuck it out to finish much later on.

The race team of Dave, Sue and Andrea, plus other assistants wisely shortened course after just one lap, and in the absence of any real wind, the second race was cancelled, but many thanks to them for their patience and to the safety crews of Terry and John, plus the all-girl team of Ann and Nina.

This weekend’s racing will be on Sunday, with two races scheduled starting at 1600, with Maurice and Eirwen in charge. These races will incorporate the rearranged Lady and Junior helm races for this season with both races to count.

Jo is pleased to report that Tom Preece, Joe, Iolo and Rhys have all passed their RYA Level 1 and 2 and some of them joined us on Sunday so well done to them, also racing regularly are Ben and Hywel who have also both passed their race instructor qualifications so again congratulations to them.

We have reported over previous weeks on the progress of another of our youngsters, Aled who had performed well at the Topper Worlds in France. More recently, Aled has returned to the UK and travelled to Pwllhelli in North Wales to take part in the Topper Nationals finishing in an excellent 20th place overall out of a massive fleet of 178 boats and also finishing fourth in his age group so another great performance by one of our youngsters.

While club racing continues on Sundays, our programme also includes the annual Bart’s Bash event which is due to take place on Sunday, September 17. This year, the organising of that has been taken on by the families of some of our newer recruits, Anne Beaver and Frank Roscoe, with the fancy dress theme this year set as black and white. Anne and Frank have come up with a number of new ideas for what is always an excellent day involving all sections of the club, including new ways of fundraising and any help members can provide in respect of manning the bar and catering side, as well as raffle donation, baking of cakes etc will be much appreciated. Visit our dinghy page for more details - the race team of Malcolm, Martin and Alan are already in place on the duty rota and two safety boats will be out as usual, but if you want to help afloat, let either me or Tom Eyre know.

That’s all for this week, hope to see you all at the weekend.

Dizzy Rascal