Weymouth
Sailing
Club

This year's YCC Transmanche, postponed from June, attracted a fleet of some 14 boats, in spite of a challenging forecast. Boat preparation on Friday afternoon was accompanied by the sound of the wind beginning to whistle in the rigging, though the sunshine continued to suggest that it was still summer. I had asked if I could join a crew, and had arrived by ferry in the morning.

Congratulations to club member, Mark Lee who has come 4th in the 2011 Dutch Open Solo Championships against stiff opposition.This year’s event was held on the Ijsselmeer making use of the splendid facilities at Medemblik over the weekend of 2-4th September, the weather was fantastic for non-sailors beautiful sunshine with light winds F1-2 over the first 2 days but it did improve for the sailors with the final day bringing a F3.

The Sargent’s annual trip to St. Mawes (Anthony, Christina and Anthony’s children Rosie and Annalise)

We were spotted packing our dinghy up for the road a month ago by a club member, and they suggested that we wrote up our sailing trip to Cornwall when we got back. So here we are and this is what we did:

An impressive turnout of 17 boats inaugurated the Squib September Series. With several of the usual suspects absent due to holiday and other commitments this promises to be a popular Thursday evening series.

Friday August 25th was the last evening sailing session for the YOBs this year and again the wind was too high to go sailing, this also meant we couldn't complete our second evening of Squib racing. Although we could not sail we still managed some time on the water with plenty of capsizing practice, followed by an end of term water fight and a few scientific experiments like how many YOBs can you get into an Optimist before it sinks. It was 9 if you were interested.

I expect you have all heard the problems Draig O’r Mor suffered with a broken mast with just weeks to go before the Fastnet Race in the qualifier round Eddystone rock. We were delighted by the swift response from both manufacturers Selden and Riggers Atlantic Marine not to forget Monkey Marine who repaired and enlarged the deck entry. We were finally ready to sail 10 days before the race so an intensive race programme was put together and the sailors of WSC and CCSC joined us in our quest to familiarise ourselves with the new spar’s characteristics.

Four members of the youth section of Weymouth Sailing Club were given the golden opportunity to be medal and flower bearers at the medal ceremonies for the recent Olympic test event.

Tom Wells was able to participate in the ceremony for the windsurfing medals and was thrilled to be able to be near Nick Dempsey who he said was “his inspiration and hero” in pursuing windsurfing.

Thursday will witness the end of summer evening sailing this year.

With a forecast of 13-15mph winds and the promise of "some sun" the second attempt at the Squib Ringstead Barbecue Race was made on Sunday 14th August. The Capp's boat "Crystella", with Ernie as a special guest, was to be the committee boat.

With the prospect of some better weather, I left last Sunday for St Vaast,and then drifted across the Baie de la Seine in glorious sunshine towards Ouistreham.