Weymouth
Sailing
Club

Club members embarked on the SS Shieldhall last Friday morning to watch the J Class yachts racing in the Solent.

Bright warm sunshine and 15 knots of breeze made for a perfect day as the venerable old steam ship followed the fleets every move in the Western Solent. The start line off Newtown Creek was crammed with spectator boats, RIB's and tenders to the yachts themselves whilst the air buzzed with sound of helicopters filming these elegant vessels.

This week one of our club members, Terry Curtis, is competing in the OK World Championships at Vallensbæk, Denmark. There are over 150 !! registered competitors from as far away as Australia and New Zealand. This year the boats will carry tracking devices to allow followers to track the racing. WSC wishes Terry every success for the coming races which start on Monday.

OK Tracking

As many of you may be aware we suffered a major trauma last Saturday, which has been reported to various degrees of accuracy and inaccuracy. So as we are close to finishing putting her back together I have now got time to write my report.

Fridays YOBs was unusual this week because for the second time this year it wasn't blown out.
This week we had no wind at all but we did have rain, lots of rain! Still our die-hard YOBs turned out and luckily we had an important task for them.

The YOBs picnic was this year held at Castle Cove Beach instead of Redcliff as in previous years. We thought with the high winds we have had lately it would be safer to drive to the beach and with the winds hitting 30 knots plus in the afternoon we made the right choice for once.

Again this year’s race round the Isle of Wight was very popular for Weymouth sailors with 9 local yachts taking part.

IRC – Farr Out, Arcsine, Wild Fire, Draig O’r Mor, Keoma, Crew Cut
ISC – Effusion, Echo, Tumba Rumba

Just prior to racing this Thursday evening (1815) you can see the handover of a torch from the 1948 games in Torbay. This torch has travelled along the south coast relaying between the sailing clubs on its way to the Academy.

http://www.rya.org.uk/programmes/sailforgold/celebrate/Pages/SailingRela...

In the vicinity of the committee boat, the torch will be presented to Michael and Diana Gill on Snowgoose, representing WSC and RDYC, by a flotilla of yachts from Lyme Regis Sailing Club. They plan to bring the torch around the Bill on Thursday.

The torch will be in the club after racing and go across to Castle Cove for Friday but will be back with us on Saturday for the regatta party, so please come along and see it if you miss the handover on the water.

The postponement of the Cimbri trophy gave me a chance to round the Bill in the next best thing to a leisurely manner given the conditions, in order to illustrate the principle mentioned in a previous article. With no disrespect to my good friend Françoise, these pictures give a clearer idea of rounding the Bill using the actual obelisk!

Given the windy conditions prevailing at the moment, it's very important for Star sailors to keep weight on. Here French Star helm Xavier Rohart, last seen on this site in the snow at home in Marseilles, contemplates the sheer beauty of a Dorset cream tea, while crew Pierre-Alexis Ponsot (hand in foreground) tucks in.

Steve Fraser

As we were all going out racing on Monday night, French Olympic team RIBs were to be seen roaring off to the Shambles for a different kind of training - this time some serious fishing!