The weekend started with the Friday night mid winter Xmas dinner, also a celebration of Grant Crawshay's birthday with the appropriate cakes and speeches.
Sunday was predicted to be 15 knts, dropping during the afternoon. We got all of that with a torrential downpour just before the start getting everything wet and a nice line of deep puddles along the edge of the runway. Happened again about an hour later. Yes, we did have 15-18 knts during the rain but then dropping to 7-8 knts during the rest of the day with some lulls as well. Two races were restarted because of a drop in wind during the race.
Great to see 5 from the Bay coming through, some to try
Ardmore for the first time and also 4 from Hamilton, all now regulars with David joining the team from the Waikato. Ross Vickers was also back sailing a borrowed kart and doesn't seem to have lost any of his ability. This meant all 4 NZ Open Champions were racing, but no pressure!
The extras made for a busy start line so we put in the box rule to help keep everything safe.
The wind was Westerly, straight up and down the runway, so those with a good feel for wind angles had the advantage. The restricted struggled a bit with only 4 metre sails but got through 4 races. Everyone else had 5.5s or borrowed them at the right time, really needed a 4 metre upwind but definitely 5.5 downwind.
All the racing in the light weights and heavies was really close with lots of changes at the front of the bunch. No one clearly dominated and wins were shared around. The 3rd race of heavies resulted in a tie when both Theo and Russell crossed the line together after several changes of lead during the race. The timers have to go back and look at the timing to 100th of a second to determine who got it. At this stage we still don't know.
Finished with a barbeque, Bruce even allowing Orca to have a sausage, and everyone went away happy after a good days racing windward/leeward courses.
Still to get a wind angle at Ardmore where we can get down to 4 metres all day or even a 3 metre.
Results out later today.
Next weekend we are trying for The Great 100 km Race, will give updates on weather forecasts later during the week.
Russell
