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Congratultions Stuart for winning the northern championship.
Would like to than k George and Ray for organising an excellent event but not enough wind in Saturday, must try harder next time. Just found out Ray Gall forgone his sailing on Sunday to mark boats round which nobody has mentioned it was most generous of you once again thanks hope everybody arrived saftely.
Brilliant event
Now, if anyone sees a pair of black, slippery socks in the changing room.... Well I can't find them at home anyway. Probably in the boot of the car but I'm not going near that yet, it's not quite its usual tidy self and anyway I haven't drunk enough cups of tea so far.
Oh, er... socks might be a bit damp
The vast majority of the credits for the organisation of the event rests with Ray and Liz who, as ever, both put a tremendous amount of effort into making sure the event was a success. Whilst the other club members played their parts, the planning, hard work and forethought was all down to them - thank you both for a superb and memorable weekend in the usual great company that defines this superb class.
Congratulations to Stuart Snell who now has the title of Northern Champion to add to his long list - well sailed that man in the face of some stiff competition.
It was great to see a good number of first timers on the water - hope we'll meet again soon
Thanks to everyone at Carsington for the good racing and even better company, so good to get 5 races in and I still got home by 1920 that's 220 miles plus ferry, that's travel friendly.
Decided to upgrade this event from "Brilliant" to "Near Perfect". Food arrangements and advance event planning figure largely in this, plus I found my socks. They were in the obvious place, which is always the last place to check - rolled up in the bottom of my inside-out drysuit feet (just like last time I "lost" them) . For anyone who has a drysuit and struggles at the end of the day to remove wet-boots these are just fantastic! http://www.speedysports.co.uk/item-Lycr ... Socks.html
Last edited by Robert on Tue Sep 27, 2011 7:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Just one more thing... can anyone explain the D18 Albanian Mafia's big "car" fascination (sic Top Gear)? Was really looking forward to Course One on day two. Have quite gone off sausages for the present.
(They're not bad when diluted with triangles, however)
With the sausage-only course, I think you have to try quite hard to find that elusive puff in the right direction, on the right tack downwind. When you get it there is great satisfaction. I found one or two on Sunday and just bore away with them carefully almost parallel with the una rig boats running straight for the mark with good acceleration - wheeee! Sadly I'm a bit lacking in practice, so that's why I would have preferred the 'P' course where the favourable sailing angle for sport rig would have been more towards the mark. On balance I thought the Olympic course was fair to both rigs and the sausage course apparently preferred by our larger cousins meant that I had to work a bit harder to make any gains downwind. That's how it felt, anyway. With a bit more wind, I might have preferred the sausage-only (upwind/downwind) course because reaching in sport rig can be overpowered in heavy air. It's just that there wasn't quite enough wind on Sunday to make it more interesting for the 15's using sport rig.
Still a great event!
Yeah, I think it would have been better to sail unarig this weekend due to wind strength and courses set. I just couldn't be bothered to take my trapeze wires etc off. Going up wind there wasn't consistently enough wind to get out on the wire, as I had to keep hopping in and out. Downwind as Robert said it was fine in the gusts, but when it dropped off, we had to sail much higher and it didn't seem to work out very well. With no reaching and little trapezing I think it was quite difficult to make sporting pay off. More practice needed I think.
I'll put the Carsington TT results into the system at some point in the next day or so, since it is the start of term at the University of Kent I am a bit busy with work.
Martin S.
Ex Sprint 15 Webmaster
Ex Seasalter SC Webmaster
RYA Regional Race Officer (South East Region) (Expired)
RYA Club Race Coach (Expired)
RYA Dinghy Sailing Instructor (Expired)
1 I thought that the use of the single lap sausage course was mainly attributable to problems on the Handicap Fleet - the performance disparity between the fast A Class cats and the slowest - Topaz or Catapult. But I didn't know why the other classes favoured just the windward-leeward course. With competent Race Committee they could have had the Windward Leeward course for the other 2 starts, and had us sailing triangles. Queen Mary ROs cope every Sunday with 3 "compund starts" (ie involving 2 or more "fleets" in each of the 3 starts) and 2 different courses; I was disappointed with the problems that dogged the Race Committee at Carsington.
2 Sailing offwind with the jib (ie Sport Mode or 2up) is almost an art. On Saturday night at Carsington, when I said that my 1st over the water/close 2nd on handicap to Stuart was due to sailing well offwind, Gordon's aside to George Wood was that I had the black art of sailing well offwind in both Modes. A critical point to remember is that a gybe costs very little distance in a cat (whereas a tack does cost a lot of distance). This means that gybing on windshifts is very likely to be beneficial, and most unlikely to be adverse. It also means that it can worth going out a long way from the centre of the course on a favourable angle/favourable wind strength, hoping/anticipating a later shift to favour the next gybe; even if you don't get that later windshift, you should gain overall from this because you've maximised the benefit from the first shift. On one downwind leg at Carsington I stayed on a good starboard angle in what looked like better wind strength all the way to the angle when gybing to port for the leeward mark was inevitable. With hindsight it might have been less risky and just as good to have gybed earlier and put in 2 more gybes, but I gained good ground.....
3 I shall be interested to see the Sport Mode results from Carsington. Although I had some dire results on handicap (one due to a broken tiller flexi-joint and another to feeling very sick - I was sick after that race and did better in the next), I now have a sneaking suspicion that I finished with a 3,1,3,3,2 result - net total 9, whereas Robert may have had 2,3,2,2,3 - net total 9 but no win...... Clearly Robin must have won.
Whichever way it turns out, George, I think you'll be collecting the Summer Series Sport Trophy. Well done. With a few more sport mode boats on the water, it could be a bit more interesting next year...
I'll put the Carsington TT results into the system at some point in the next day or so, since it is the start of term at the University of Kent I am a bit busy with work.
k George and Ray for organising an excellent event but not enough wind in Saturday, must try harder next time. Just found out Ray Gall forgone his sailing on Sunday to mark boats round which nobody has mentioned it was most generous of you once again thanks hope everybody arrived saftely.
and anyway I haven't drunk enough cups of tea so far.
in the face of some stiff competition.
. For anyone who has a drysuit and struggles at the end of the day to remove wet-boots these are just fantastic! http://www.speedysports.co.uk/item-Lycr ... Socks.html 
