by Colin Franke and Marg Douglas

Due to the strong and nasty North Westerly being experienced at 12:30 hours Colin Franke (after speaking to our sailors at WYC) and in consultation with John Hollander at Merricks (with discretion being the better part of valour, and not wishing to damage boats or selves) it was decided to abandon the two MYC/WYC Interclub Challenge Races being held off Palmers Bluff. Winds were consistently averaging 17-21 knots with gusts significantly above this so without Steve Cross (it’s only a puff, I’ll go out) present no-one was too keen to compete in the interclub challenge that was being held well off-shore.

After some consultation amongst our WYC sailors and Bruce Douglas the Sailing Officer, who was the keenest (and his small band of volunteers) it was decided to put in a short course inside the reef (close to shore to make it easy to bail out, if there was no fun being had) for eight willing participants who tentatively hit the water for a social and at some stages early felt like a survival race. Thankfully the gusty winds abated over the afternoon and two short social races were completed, with the second race being in more moderate but still varying winds.

Bruce, Glen and Darrin ran the races while Wendy, Glenda, Adrienne and Marg  manned the tower.  We had Andrew & Nicholas, Martin on Taipans. Colin in his Impulse. Josh and Bryan in Sabres. Will & Lynn in a pacer.

Andrew Croft sailed his new RS dingy around which looked very impressive on the water, and I am led to believe with the yardstick that will fall into Division 3. It’s a nice-looking boat and could get some interest from the kids progressing up through tackers, if they are not swayed to the dark side of multi-hulls.

Also, a welcome back to Daniel Franke who has purchased back his old Mosquito from Andrew Hill (Yahoo says Andrew, I have the wife off my back now as no one should have 2 boats) and returned to the fold where he had a good day out, capsized a few times and came in tired and looking like a drown rat. He found it more difficult to right the Mosquito that he remembered now that he has lost kilos of ballast and needs to work out how to modify his righting technique to suit.

Other intrepid sailors were Andrew Hill & Nicholas Juravic, Martin Corcoran, Will Palmer and Lynn Dugay, Bryan Hill, Josh Franke and Colin Franke.

After all boats and sailors returned to shore safely, and happily the boats also without major incident or damage the results were a win for all participants.

A quite social drink was had on the deck after the event in very pleasant and mild condition, only to be sent inside when the strong southerly change came through and happy in the knowledge that we were not on the water.