wee Nip Medal Competition - Round 8

9th August 2014

Report by Mike Ewart

Today we sailed the August Wee Nip Open at two Islands RYC.
The wind was pleasant and variable coming from the Eastern Island and we used our eastern sailing area, the Racing Officer set up what he called a City Centre Racing Course, of a start line (which stayed the same all day!) a windward gate and a leeward gate, this course kept all the buoys well within sight of even those of us with specsaver assistance, and not once during the day was the cry of I cant see the buoy heard.

The racing was very tight with Keith Coxon, Peter Shepherd John Simmons and Mike Ewart in the first four for most of the time with incidents pushing them down every now and then, the racing in general was very close with practically all of the competitors getting up into the top 5 at some point, the wind gradually increased during the day but no real trauma with multiple sail changes as we are only allowed one sail size so if overpowered struggle like the rest of us.

The organisation was on the basis of one fleet with 2 observers for each race, so in the morning 9 races were completed before lunch which meant everyone had sailed 8 races, after lunch we had 2 volunteers from the retired skippers so we then sailed a further 8 races and everyone did 16 races, there was little bit of attrition of boats due to breakage and gear failures and unfortunately due to prior commitments John Simmons had to miss the last 3 races, that could have changed the results quite considerably.

Still well done to all the competitors on a clean well fought race meeting and in particular congratulations to Keith Coxon who went on to a good but very close win.

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The next round in this competition is at Two Islands 13th September 2014