RC Laser Northern District TT event 5 at Fleetwood Model Yacht Club
by Tony Wilson 4 Dec 2019 14:01 PST
1 December 2019
RC Laser Northern District TT event 5 at Fleetwood © Susan Sharman
Blue skies, frosty morning, but lacking wind in which is the key ingredient for a good day's sailing. On arrival to the lake, there was actually a nice steady breeze coming through the bridge from the East. This wasn't the forecast and only lasted for a couple of practice runs and until everyone had assembled and enrolled for the day.
Now down to a negligible light wind drift from the boat house, an East bound course was set. From about two thirds down,we were to sail up to the club house, diagonal across into what was diminishing, round the buoy, back to the start mark and finish half way up. All marks taken to port.
The first race was slow, but just about worked. The second race was even slower. Rob was caught out at the start line with something coming undone and had to leave us briefly. Something like ten minutes later Rob was able to rejoin us and we hadn't even made the windward mark. Rob didn't finish last on this race and came somewhere mid fleet, so slow was the race.
The outer buoy in the area of lull was abandoned and we settled for the simple sausage course, and that was another that drifted on up to lunchtime to complete just about three races.
After lunch there was only a slight improvement, although the wind had swung to the North. A reversal of course and a start by the club and head to the far bank half way diagonally across the lake, across to the near side, back up the lake and finish on the same finishing line but from the opposite direction. The marks were taken to Port except for the last one with a cross over to the finish, that caught a few out.
The wind was moving all the while and settled from the North West corner, so we stretched the course and just had the windward leeward marks again and both taken to port by which now the wind had drastically increased. John Armstrong was the only one to try 'B' rig which looked the right call, but returned the next race with the big sail again. The wind was at the top end of our 'A' sail although if you ventured more than half across the lake on return you got caught in the odd swirl and needed that sail area.
The races although a bit longer and still only one and a quarter lap were starting to speed up and we settled on 10 races by the end of the day. The day went fairly well. Rob had won the first race in light wind, Derek won five of them. Tony won three and John coming in very strong towards the end of the day won the last one.
Derek won the day, giving us for a first time five individual winners so far in the series from five race days. The last day with presentation to the series is again at West Lancs and maybe we can again have another separate winner for the day.
Results:
1 Derek Priestly 14 pts Fleetwood
2 Tony Wilson 16 pts Fleetwood
3 Rob Wheeler 20 pts Blackpool & Fylde