Sailing in the Sun

Some days never turn out as planned. The sun shone. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. We arrived at the club at 10am knowing we had to move the boat from the boat park onto the grass by the Thames and that we would need to fill in a hole and move some bunting to get the boat in, take part in the handicap race and have some fun sailing too. But that wasn't what happened.

We were off to a good start. we extracted the boat from the boat park and loaded it up with all the sailing gear and took the boat across the railway line. The Toura is heavy and its double wheels caused us problems in the potholes in the newly repaired road. We can fixed this.

So out came the spade and wheelbarrow and we spent some time filling in many of the pot holes from the boat park to the railway crossing. Four barrow loads disappeared into the holes and soon they were level.

Bunting

We couldn't put the boat in its place because the mast was higher than the bunting. But that didn't really matter because we would put the boat in the water and go sailing. The bunting would have to wait until later, but as things happen some of the safety boat crew hadn't turned up and another Paul and his two small kids were all that was available to support the race. Alistair, running the race, asked if we could help and of course we did , so I took to the safety boat, and my Paul said that he would ready the boat, so if the safety boat team turned up, we could take part in the second race.

The OK Dinghies and the Handicap Race

The OK race took part in very light winds that we either gusty or no wind. The race was in two parts  - the boats that got to the end mark and had some wind and the rest of the boats that arrived and found no wind and had to amble around the mark.