Another Tuesday night rolled around on Scotsman’s bay and again the OK Dinghy set itself up to start with the Lasers. Pre-race was great fun for everyone with solid Bft 5-6 gusts rolling across the course and plenty of power reaching being enjoyed by all the lighter boats. Then the course was set for a Windward-leeward race, so no reaching in the actual race. A pity, but a valid call for a committee to make.
With a pin bias the OK Dinghy won the start pretty cleanly, a length ahead of the next Laser. Then everyone tacked onto port and headed up the beat. Fairly big shifts were coming across the course and the OK Dinghy rounded the windward mark second/third, alongside Galavan’s Laser with O’Leary and Dwyer behind and Kenneally ahead.
And then the slide started. Unlike last summer or even earlier this year when the Milky Bar Kid was pacing Lasers pretty well on a dead run, now we’re seeing Lasers just sliding past and gaining many tens of metres on a run. Not fun to watch. Lack of practice shows! Time for remedial classes, methinks.
Upwind we were gaining and sometimes losing, but the shifts dominated gains and losses. The second beat saw the two leading Lasers lock in a big right shift and the race turned into a bit of a procession for the last lap and a half.
Again, main problem is downwind speed. Are the Lasers going faster (they’ve been working on it) or are we going slower. Hard to tell right now.
Race ended with Kennealy ahead of Galavan, then O’Leary, Murphy in the K1, then the Milky Bar Kid. The timings in the results seem wonky (just our impression) but again, are largely beside the point.