Sunday, May 14, 2006

Lionel Wilkinson Handicap Series (monohulls only)



Well, I have had some fun this weekend. The weather has not been the best but it was better than the forecast. The fun started with racing on the Saturday evening. Tow races, handicap, with a mixed fleet ranging from Lasers to a variety of asymetrics and 6 Enterprises, one of whom was a visitor from Hykem Sailing Club.

The first race turned out to be my discard but I got off to an excellent start and lead the Enterprises around the first lap but made a mistake at the leward mark in that I rounded to close and couldn't take until the boats behind had and thus I lost a place.
This is the point where I lost a place to th green boat, I managed to stay ahead of the yellow one for a while.
The a bit further up the beat I misjudged a starboard taker and had to do two turns and lost another place but I managed to hold off the next boat and finished third amoungst the Enterprises but about 14th on handicap.

The second race start with a terrible start, I choose the wrong end. It was a heavily starboard biased line and I knew that to try and start at the pin end would quite likely end in being swamped by the faster boats, but I was too far down the line and lost out. I finished 5th Ent but 13th on handicap.

Sunday morning racing started at 7am in lighter winds which suit the Enterprise on handicap. However we were down on numbers and only 4 Ents.
This time the start line was better laid wit a bit of a port bias. I got a reasonable start and had a great struggle with two other Ents and just pipped one of them to finishes 2nd end and 9th on handicap.
The last race I finished 11th on handicap but 2nd Ent again.
Overall I finished 13th out of 25 boats entered.

2 comments:

Tillerman said...

You sound like me. Whatever happens I seem to end up mathematically exactly in the middle of the fleet.

Tim Coleman said...

You, me and most of the others then! Its a good job that the winning of the race isn't the main objective if it was I would give up on it. Winnig a race is the icing on the cake. It is hard to pin down the real reason for racing. Sometimes its the close exhilerating competition, sometimes the sheer sailing experiance, often just being on the water in the company of friends or a combination of all the above. Mind you I especially enjoyed pipping someone on the line, quite literally on the last tack! That was cool!