Right, back to the serious business of me and James sailing...
So 23 Ents were greeted with light breeze and hot sunshine.. and its late September! Light winds @ Northampton may not be ideal, but hey, its September and were in shorts so I aint complaining!
With a late start planned (1:30) I arrived @ Pitsford Reservoir just after 11am with James about 15 mins behind me with the boat and Anita. Registered the boat then off to the canteen to pick up 2 teas, a coffee and 2 bacon butties just in time for J & A to arrive....thats service!
So after the usual pleasantries, briefing and rigging the boat we went off for what was hopefully going to be a good event - we left Katie on the shore wondering why her helm and boat weren't there yet with us all heading off for the start... Birdy eventually appeared - he reckoned if we'd had a general he'd have made it on time, sorry we'll try harder next time! Poor Baz needed a crew for the Saturday but couldn't find one, still 3 races to count and 3 races being run on Sunday, it wasn't a problem he could still string a good series together as long as he kept his nose clean....should have took some tissues with him Sunday!
So the windy was light and variable in direction, strength and who it favored.... we had a reasonable day, coming out with a 4th and 5th (and a bad 8th) we had some bad luck in one of the races, we'd managed to get upto the top 2 and were having a good battle, swapping places in the September heat, when the breeze died on us and the majority of the fleet came down wind on the breeze and swamped us...damn.... The results for day 1 were as follows:
Race 1
1st Phil and Catrine
2nd Shane and Al
3rd Martin and Chris
Race 2
1st Nigel and Katie
2nd Martin and Chris
3rd Shane and Al
So that was Saturday over, and the majority of the G&T Team were nowhere to be found - James and Alison were there keeping the teams reputation going, but Julie was at home, Ges was somewhere and I had swanned off home to see the family and then went upto Coventry to Steve Irish's house to see James Date, Steve Irish and a few other RS800 yachters who were at Draycote for a bit of a "blast"..... I'm now all for fitting a bowsprit to the Ent or maybe a twin trapeze...??
Reports are so far hazy from the "Saturday night at the club", but I'm sure more facts will come 2 light over the next few days, haven't even got any pictures I can post.. come on someone must have took some? Send them to me and I'll put them here:
insert pics of drunk Ent sailors here
So, when I arrived at around 9:20am this morning for the 10am start, people were looking fairly fuzzy as always - James was a star and there was a coffee and bacon sarnie with brown sauce waiting for me, now that is cool...ta James.
So there was a bit more breeze (and it built through the day) and a little less heat to greet us on the water, and a variety of courses were used by the OD to try to confuse the fuzzy ones, results were fairly tight at this point and through the rest of the day, making for some good racing, some black-flags and plenty of action... Race 4 had 4 or 5 people chucked out on the black flag - notably Youngy getting his first proper black-flag-OCS in over 20 years, well done mate and poor Baz getting one too which left him counting a 24th.
Race 3
1st Anne and Alan
2nd Shane and Al
3rd Martin and Chris
Race 4
1st Nigel and Katie
2nd Ant and James
3rd Shane and Al
Race 5
1st Barry and Julie
2nd Martin and Chris
3rd Nigel and Katie
So that was Northampton and the Midland Areas for 2003, the final results were as follows:
Overall Results
1st 5pts Nigel Bird & Katie Dolling
2nd 7pts Martin Honnor & Chris Blundell
3rd 7pts Shane MacCarthy & Al Fry
4th 11pts Phil & Catrine Bevan
5th 11pts Ant & James
6th 12pts Anne Jackson & Alan Skeens
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