We assembled at Hollowell Sailing Club this Saturday 16th July, and we were met with a rather fickle wind direction which came from the rear of the clubhouse. So after a little time we embarked on the rowing boat to set a course, which consisted of a reaching start close to the pontoon going towards the dam and then to a gate set out roughly in the middle of the start and first buoy but towards the open water, so we had a triangle then sausage towards the gate and the finish with another buoy set parallel to the finish for final rounding. Some of the buoys decided they were going to move on their own so we had to do a bit of retrieving and repositioning. There was also a bit of boat retrieval with some skippers running out of range, but we did that with the aid of the inflatable Honwave.  The weather did start to improve during racing and we eventually
reduced our clothing as things started to warm up at last? The eventual winner was John Simmons and Peter Shepherd presented him with a small prize.

Preparations were started early on Saturday morning Keith Bell already had the rowing boat out and ready for action at 7.30am. Keith and Mike Ewart assisted PJ to lay the course, which was a short into wind triangle going up the lake from the dam port round buoy 1 and a spreader to 2, which was also taken to port. Then a downwind dash to the start, which was used as a gate and a sausage out to 1 to port and then a downwind dash to the finish.

There was a very stiff breeze blowing, mental note to measure the wind strength next time, but suffice to say the Wee Nips were planing downwind in a most spectacular fashion.

Peter Jackson had a collision with Mike Ewart, PJ's fault but Mike's Wee Nip road up and switched of the power to the works, which lead to a power boat recovery, a lesson to be learnt there! Geoff Raygada had a good day and finally won the competition, followed by Mike Ewart, but in third place doing remarkably well was Tom Steel, he just kept popping up in all the right places. There was a remarkable attrition towards the end of the sixteen races with five retirements due to broken rigs.

Just a final note of reminder that we do have to start prompt at 9.00am so briefing will always be at 8.45am in order that we do not go over our allotted finish time of 1.00pm.