Finally, a day with good winds and fine weather, plus of course good food and company. Sunny and hot and with 12+ knts of breeze most of the day sailing without POD or carbons was not a problem other than Grant having the wind blow up his shorts! It did take a while for me to get everything ready before the day with 3 karts sitting with PODs on and not enough standard mast sections if we all used 4 metre sails. Luckily Dan and Matty sailed with 3 meters. Started with the normal barbeque, lots of food and drinks and then because the wind was up we had some fun stuff for the prizes. Good to see some of our new members joining in, most without PODs at this stage but on the shopping list. The Pearson family joined us for the first time in 2 new blokarts and sailed around well, Wayne was another for the first time and also Rob, Rod, Jude, and Adrian all having good races. Haydn won the scratch race to start and then we organised reverse order races to work out if the back markers could sail their way through the field over 3 laps. Some tricky sailing as the wind went a bit soft at one stage and everyone was having to tack down the road. Either Haydn or Wayne got this with Marg second and Grant third. Did the blokart lolly scramble but everyone cheated by sailing real slow over the grass therefore getting lots of lollies. No one ran over their hand that I know of and Nicholas came out with a haul of 8 so was judged the winner. The relays were a bit of a shambles as everyone tried to pass the batten in the carpark before doing another lap. The results were dubious but the spectators announced Jon and Nicholas as winners, even after the rerun. The chocolate father Xmas race again resulted in everyone getting a chocolate but no winners could be decided. The chocolates started to melt in the heat so gave this away, as did the leftover chocolate deserts that was meant to be afternoon tea. No-one went hungry, newcomers were hopefully made to feel welcome and the no PODs and carbons seem to even up the fleet a bit. That's the end of "official" gatherings for the year although if the wind is up Thursday night could be a last twilight sail before Xmas and there's talk of a beach sail Friday if the wind goes SW. Will let you know. Now to reassemble the blokarts.
Russell