Largo Bay Nationals - Day 2
Thursday morning greeted the Cherub fleet with clouds heavy rain, and very little wind, this cleared through the morning and we were all glad that we were not over the water in North Berwick where there seemed to be a rain cloud stuck all morning. The rain cleared away as the boats started to rig, and just as the first boats launched a nice wind arrived from the East.
Race 3
With a good size course set and good breeze the race got off to a clean start with Chris “the Scrote” Lewns in Antidote getting a clear start accelerating away from everyone like they had an outboard motor, they stayed in front till the end of the race. Atum Bom had a better time in this race being much more suited to the breeze and managed to claw there way to 3rd position despite there customary rubbish start. Andy and Jill Peters had their best race of the day managing to miss seaweed and unauthorised swimming to finish 2nd. There was close racing between the 97 rules boats, with Will and Beth in Born Slippy, Phil and Carol in Pocket Rocket and Davro and Matt in the Pasta Frenzy swapping places regularly throughout the race, Born Slippy had the edge up wind, with the others catching down wind, it ended with Pocket, the Pasta and Born slippy finishing with about 20 seconds between them.
Race 4
The course was shortened a bit for race four as the breeze had dropped to a tricky intermediate with loads of crouching on the trapeze, with occasional twin wiring, it was a tricky decision whether to hot it up down wind or to soak. Chris “the scrote” lewns lead the way around the corse again, closely followed by Paul Croute and Tim Unerman in Atum bom, Graham and Eddie in Riot Van got third after a good ding dong with Andy and Jill Peters in Usagi Yojimbo coming in third. Badgers Nadgers had a good race fighting with Ronin swapping places on most legs. Badgers had the ability to point, Ronin had mastered footing and flying but on this occasion the result was pretty similar in round the cans pace. Badgers just pipped Ronin at the finish for seventh. The 97 rules boats again had a good race with plenty of swapping places up wind and down. Despite horrific spinnaker pole problems on the vintage symmetric rigged the cats whiskers managed to keep ahead of the flying kipper who were struggling to tame the turbo tango! Various problems arose with the demon pole during the race mainly down to tims poor knot tying, if you cant tie knots tie lots! At one point when the halyard was wrapped round the bow and the pole was stuck up in the air due to the spinnaker down-haul block being stuck under |tims sparkly new D1.5's Kate decided it would be much better if Howard concentrated on where they were going and she sorted out the issue!
Race 5
Stu Tinner and Ross Burkin (the gurkin) sailing Ronin stormed through the fleet to get their best nationals race result to date with close fought race, just 20 seconds behind Graham and Eddie Bridle in Riot Van . Chris (the scroat) Lewns and Tom Pygall were racing ahead and while initially Atum Bom was tussling with Ronin and Riot, they pulled out into a comfortable second place. Dean Ralph and Simon Jones have started to show some of the potential of their new E6 Eleanor with a fifth place. Usagi suffered an unfortunate capsize early in the race but then showed their class and sailed back through the fleet for a respectable finish. The boys in Cheese showed that they had the skill to cope with breeze to consolidate their high flying results on day one and finished a solid 8th. Andy and Jill swapped sailing for swimming and had fun showing the Cheeseheads an E5 close up (John has an E5 in build).
Series
After five races the front end of the fleet looks like:
Position | Boat Name | Sail No | Crew Name | Points |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Antidote to Panel Games | 2699 | C Lewns T Pygall | 4 |
2 | Usagi Yojimbo | 3202 | A Peters J Peters | 9 |
3 | Atum Bom | 2688 | P Croate T Unerman | 13 |
The Frolics
Back on shore the class had it's AGM, which was followed by a pub quiz in the Raylway including a special Cherub themed round, which had only a few questions on boats, but loads on fat flying babies.