Originally sent by: Don
                        

                        Welcome Blokarters,

Well, what a day for those at the Sharpe end.

The Day was great, the most wind we have had at club day so far. The 330m track was covered in 21 seconds. Tell me what the average speed that makes it.

Yes we had SOME problems at the start. We have analysed what happened and have confirmed that it was not the programme that really was to blame but it certainly held things up. Yes, I heard someone say, we have had nearly a year to sort things out, for you I tell you to crawl back into the hole you came from. I digress, computers and the programmes and what goes with it is an ongoing learning experience.

We had to resort to manual counting at the early start and with 15 in a heat lapping at 30 sec intervals, the callers could not even keep up. You will find my version of the manual results as we could figure out in the first race of the middleweights in 'the results' on Jlap. Who was number 34A

Thanks Grant for relaying some exciting hi-lights, there were some good spectator action, fast 4m sails in 17+ knots. Everyone were in close quarters all day, I've never seen it so close, guys who were a little off the pace not so long ago are now right up there. Sorry Alex, you spring to mind, not that you were that slow but hey you are right there, check the results.

The water corner, at first... ha.... everyone were gingerly skirting the island lake, Russel was that you. A couple of races later, going thru the lake was actually faster and gained more ground, yeah Russel, stripped to a "t" SHIRT and soaked, check the results for the heavy weights, that's how he came first in a couple of races. Oh yes that is where the McKenzie 'shunting' happened too in the Super Heavyweights, 'get in the way Colin' splashing in the water with one wheel up, was too tempting to give him a wedgie (Pod less it used to be fun) but I forgot the pod which Colin flattened.

 No Mans land, the area between the rope and the starting gate. I was pleased to see this area respected, there were no false start rules. The gate read your transponder and it can actually read you as you approach, you know, to about this close (area undefined and varied as to speed approaching it) so we laid a rope about 2m from it and called it the start line which you could cross at your own peril, fair or not it worked. If you were in 'no mans land' before the hooter then you risked a false start and you will be one lap down for the whole race, ask Theo Vondervoort, McKenzie couldn't catch him all race but was already first..ha.. without knowing it, thanks Theo. (Super Heavies)

Oh yes a lesson for us all. If you didn't agree with the race out come don't bleat like a sheep on heat but just check the race result and look at the lap times, a big clue is the times, if you were right up there but one lap showed you doing a time twice as long as the others around you then let us know and we edit the result, how do you think I'm leading the points series! Check the 2nd round of the middle weights Ross.

With all the problems we had had I then discovered, like a heart murmur, two karts going across the gate and three beeps!!! "what the" and then an kart a little later with no beep "why the". Around the they go again, two karts three beeps and then one kart with no beep, Could the gate read the third Kart THAT early? ARRH someone was checking our system with two transponders in one Kart and the ghost was transponderless. Yeah already tried that, we have had ten transponders randomly on a kart and all have registered!

Overall we saw the excitement and fun expressed by those there on the day. It was certainly what the sport is all about, timing systems invariably allows more of us to enjoy ourselves in a competitive nature. To the Bay team you will see that there is a blank in the points series for the heavyweights and the middleweights and message has gone out to 'support'.

Good Luck for the Auckland Champs.
The Bay has a twilight pre weekend BBQ on Friday night before the Labour weekend.

Cheers,
Don