OOD: Tim Wellburn
Safety Boat: Nick & Nicole Jeffery
Weather: Sunny, light SW wind abating for the start but picking up in the latter stages of the race.
Course: short, 2-mark ‘A’ course with a Zoffany House start to avoid the busy SOG street party spilling out towards the Bell & Crown. Start time 15:16.
Six varied boats took to the water, and initially seemed to ignore Starter’s Orders, remaining for the most part reluctant to leave the shelter of the bank and adjacent festivities ashore.
Eventually all got underway, slowly finding an eddy to edge downstream against the flood tide. Remarkably, David and Sheila Berger (in OOD Tim’s Ent, Ixion) and Lev Kolobov (solo in Porpoise, Ent.) completed the first lap literally in parallel after 11 minutes 39 seconds, Rob Adams (Phoebe, Laser) chasing only a minute behind. Olly Adams & First Officer Billy in their Mirror (Spinosaurus), and Sam & Catherine in the Wayfarer, Spirit of Youth, followed either side of the 15 minute mark. First lap Wooden Spoon Award went to Tim Young (Ait Knots, Wanderer) who was chasing Sam Shemtob’s Wayfarer and so nearly crossed the line at 18 minutes, but then suffered the difficult combination of too little wind and too much tide, and duly suffered the frustration of taking another 12 minutes to complete the lap.
Thereafter, lap times improved, albeit not consistently. To check the OOD’s concentration, four boats managed to complete their first or second laps as an unpredictable flotilla at 16+ minutes.
Thereafter, Rob put in some increasingly fast lap times in his Laser and the Enterprises of David & Sheila, and Lev performed briskly, managing a couple more laps than the other boats.
A miscommunication by the OOD (mea culpa) caused David & Sheila and Lev to sail a gratuitous additional lap (now struck from the record although, frustratingly, probably their fastest!) while the rest of the field completed their (legitimate) final lap.
We retrieved the boats at high water, which was awash the club gates, and proceeded to party in style.
Tim Wellburn (OOD)
