Saturday 25th July 2015 Vane 36’s

A great day’s sailing. Well done everybody. Five skippers gave their apologies – two because they were watching the America’s cup live at Southsea (and it is a once in a lifetime thing), two because of injuries and one because he was in France at a wedding!

Nine of us turned out to race. The 36 vane boats are amazing. It was quite gusty but sail setting worked effectively (for those in the points!) Mervyn won – with everyone helping him as he had no mate. He did sail exceptionally well to gain 23 points. Second was Peter Fothergill with Paul Edwards as mate. I have to admit a vested interest here as we had lots of re sails against them any way and THEN Peter’s boat managed to wrap itself, rather spectacularly, round a buoy.........I was quite happy with this as we were sailing against him BUT in the interests of fairness we had a re-sail and Peter and Paul won even though my boat had loads of weed.........

So they were second. Graham with his grandson, Lewis, would have been second BUT the above meant that they were third and Jacque and Eric were fourth.

The race had added interest with various crabbing groups around the lake. Once a teacher, always a teacher, as I corrected one young man’s ‘I catched a crab.’.... ‘Hang on a minute, I think you mean caught a crab’ ‘ah yes I caught a crab and his brother’. I decided at that point that going into the likelihood of the second crab being a brother would take too long. Never mind they were enjoying themselves even if I did manager to push (accidentally) a line and a bait box into the lake as I recovered my 36. I apologised and they carried on.......

Tomorrow a league Vane A. Hope we all have the energy!!!!