DF65 Handicap Racing

It was awesome to welcome back Tony Smith who has been home bound caring for family and today he was offered a leave pass for a few hours. Great to have you back mate.

 

The forecast on Windy.com suggested light breezes from the North changing to Westerly mid afternoon. Temp was a very comfortable 19°C with full sunshine. We parked at the south end and set up along the western wall, fully expecting to slide the course to be more West / East oriented but as usual that was not the case. The breeze strengthened on and off during the afternoon but stayed mostly Northerly drifting to the North East for short bursts just to confuse the skippers.

 

Our course gets a score of 7.5 out of ten. We could start on Starboard and had to make two tacks to reach the top mark. The reason for the lower than perfect score was because sometimes when a north-easterly popped up some of the fleet did make the mark in one tack. Well done to them.

 

Unfortunately we had a few boat issues pop up during the day, Graeme Elliott and Bob Carr to mention just a few. The spread of skippers for race one was huge from scratch out to 100 seconds. For the most part everyone started well with only a few contact issues. The windward mark was less clear cut with a few skippers still diving into gaps they are not entitled to. If you are not overlapped four boat lengths out you should not dive inside. It is tempting when the boat in front goes wide but if they round into you, you do not have rule 18b rights. You should go behind and not interfere. A clear call of "114 has clear ahead rights to port buoy". If challenged that there was an overlap then a protest should be called. Today there were several calls "You cant go in there!" but several of us were not even close and it sat us back. Calls of warning and protest need to be clear and mention sail numbers. Once called you are required to do a 360° penalty promptly on the water. Angry backchat is not beneficial for anyone and it leaves a bad smear over the fleet. Let's keep it fun and get over it.

 

There were 7 individual Races winners with David Jones achieving two and Mitch Benson winning three times. All fourteen skippers had at least one podium race finish, absolute gold for the fleet.

 

Report by ALRS Commodore Andrew Donkin