South Bank Sailing Club Blog

Sunday 15th May. We had a good turnout of 6 sailors for the downriver race on Sunday –  5 Lasers, with Renato, James, Jakob and Seb with Laser Full rigs and Ellie on her first downriver race with a Radial, together with Peter in a Solo. Jane was in charge with Kev as her assistant and John B and I in the second safety boat with his twins, Celeste and Thalia, who both had a turn at driving the boat after Race 2 had started  – new talent for the safety boat! All seemed to be going well until we tried to get Henry the Rigiflex to start, and then we had a fast and furious rushing round with different battery and WD40 trying to get the Down button for the prop to work, but no joy.  We quickly came to the conclusion we needed to try James, the other 4m Rigiflex, so with more battery swaps and a lot of crossed fingers, bingo, we had lift off!  Thank goodness for John, Kev and Seb  – my contribution was luckily confined to finding the spanners….. Eventually we got sorted...

Sunday 9th May. Race Officer:  Joseph Safety boat:  Esteban & Sara With wind from SSW at 13mph gusting 25mph, three buoys were laid in a line on the Fulham bank.  The race was to be five laps, with a sausage between the first & second buoys. Seven boats took to the water, six Lasers & a Solo.  All Lasers were with either 4.7 or radial sails. The boats took only a couple of minutes to reach the buoys, then began the long & tricky beating back against wind & tide.  Nine boats from Ranelagh came along to sail in virtually the same water.  In the flurry of sails it was difficult at times to distinguish which sail belonged to which club.  After about 16 minutes Renato rounded to complete the first lap, followed by Henry, Peter, Jane, Ellie, Gary & Chris.  The race was shortened to four laps.  And it was the same order at the end of the second lap.  As the last loop started the only change was that Gary had overtaken Ellie.  Then a puzzling thing happened.  Renato, Pe...