02 July Gillette Series – Race 11

A 10 mph wind from the South West gave Dean and his team the relative luxury of a bank start and 15 boats set out on the start gun.
Karen got her usual cracking start and led from start to finish (as usual again !). Dave L came through the first lap in 2nd place followed by Dave C and Curtis, all in Lasers. By the end of the second lap Curtis had managed to nudge past Dave C and held on to this 3rd place behind Karen and Dave L to the finish.
Behind this leading group of Lasers there was a tussle between Mike A in his Lightning and Chris A and Julian in Solos, with Julian coming through to win this particular battle.
Bob in granddaughter Charlotte’s Laser and Monica in the pink machine disappeared after one lap, but did turn up for supper later. Nick Jones in the Radial went on Lap 3 and Peter R in the Enterprise was unfortunate as he thought the race was being finished at the end of Lap 3 and pulled off only to find everyone else was carrying on ! In fact the wind got quite frisky during the last two laps and quite a number would have opted for three laps instead of four, especially when the weed lifted your rudder !
Lower down the fleet there was a motley crew battling away with Hugh–Byte, Sally & Stuart – Leader, Mike T-Laser and Paul H-Supernova changing places; with the Leader leading this squadron at the finish.
The finishing places on the water were 1st Karen, 2nd Dave L, 3rd Curtis, but on handicap Julian squeezed in between Karen and Dave L.
It was interesting to see how close on handicap the following boats were – with 4th place Curtis followed by Chris A + 8 sec, David C + 9 sec and Mike A + 13 sec, so only 13 sec between 4th and 7th in a race just over the hour !