Dart 15 Forums

Liam. Paul did stake his tent down but had to abandon it because of wind and rain. Erling's car was shaking and heard Paul's tent bounce off of it at about 3 am.

Many thanks to all our visitors over the weekend at Seasalter. It is a great event for promoting the class to our growing membership and over a third of our club members were involved in helping and watching. Hopefully by next time a number of our newer fleet members will be ready to take part.

Thanks also to Brian Phipps for making the long trip with the support trailer and to George Stephen for overcoming Friday's illness to make the trip through torrential rain to come and watch on Sunday - to find most people had already started the trek home.

Report to follow but suffice it to say at present that despite the weather we managed to hold two full races with 18 boats in F5/6 on Saturday and had to abandon Sunday. We have a new Southern National Champion, Paul Grattage who also won the Sport mode trophy. Stuart Snell took 2nd place with Chris Tillyer 3rd.

We hope everyone got home without mishap, winds at SSC reached 49mph by the time we would have been racing and we had some weird lightning across the sea so my dismay at having to abandon turned out to be fully justified.

We had a visit from one of our ex members during racing on Saturday, ex Olympic sailor Ian Rhodes who now sails an A class cat at Whitstable YC. He was amazed to see the fleet in action as earlier one Nacra from WYC had gone out and promptly capsized so they abandoned sailing and then saw our fleet on the water across the bay. He came over to watch the second race and told us how much heavier the seas were outside the bay. Even so it is clear how versatile and forgiving the Sprint 15 is allowing sailing in most conditions that any helm might wish to go out in.

Thanks for coming and best wishes to all

Steve Willis