Summer Points Series 8 2000

Well, it had to happen sometime, and Fly’s Wednesday Night bubble was finally burst by the return of the very slippery and consistently well-sailed Hawk 20 Didima IV. If we were going to be beaten, it was always most likely to be by her or Fascinator, and so it proved to be...

It was a pleasant, sunny evening, with a pleasant light breeze, and six boats came out to enjoy the last race of the series. Somebody set the infamous Course 2S (now forever to be associated with the Oban Times headline ‘Glencoe Sailors Follow Lost Fly’), but we’re not very likely to get that one wrong again! We planned and got a peach of a port tack start right up at the inshore end of the line, with only Didima joining us, and enjoyed a very shifty beat up to the mark at St John’s. Halfway up the kite reach to Callert we were starting to pull out a fairly substantial lead, but Didima was closing slightly as we sailed into calmer waters at the mark. A slight cock-up on the gybe (too fast from one reach to another, with not enough time spent dead downwind?) saw the spinnaker blow through the foretriangle (now, that’s a first for us!) but, although the resulting mess cost us a minute or two, it certainly didn’t cost us the race. Didima probably always had the measure of us (try covering a short course 17% quicker than a well-sailed Hawk in light conditions), was not that far behind at the finish and certainly deserved to win.

Results:

Summer Points Series 8

  1. Didima IV (Hawk 20, Bob and Jean Aitken), R 1104, elapsed 3391, corrected 3072
  2. Fly (Impala, Peter Duggan), P 943, elapsed 3151, corrected 3341
  3. Elrhuna (one-off, Hilary Watson), C 1070, elapsed 3927, corrected 3670

Final Series Places

  1. Fly (Impala, Peter Duggan), 5 points — 1, (6), 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, (2)
  2. Squirt (Hunter 19, David Cooper), 17 points — 3, 2, (8), 0, 4, 4, 4, (5)
  3. Kerry Mist (Kerry 27, John Grant), 18 points — 6, 1, (8), 0, (11), 5, 2, 4

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