A practice day on Friday saw the first joint sail with our new Norfolk fleet of Martin Browne and Chris Sallis, who have been warming up in Eastern isolation and seemed alarmingly quick to those of us from the South coast. A very pleasant session ended with enormous quantities of sausages on CCSC's DIY barbecue evening. We knew we had elected the right class chairman when Tim Garvin did the supermarket sausage run for us all, but insisted on fillet steak for himself only. Class will out.
Despite the dire forecasts, we enjoyed reasonably steady 7-10kt winds throughout the weekend, but it was certainly a different experience from the recent events. Most of the fleet were surprised that conditions exist when a D1 is not a full hiking experience both upwind and downwind, but the lightweights soon learned that hiking upwind with everything pinned in and then soaking downwind was a potent combination, and the fleet pecking order changed continuously as learning progressed. Some of the more generously-proportioned (you know who you are) found that accelerating off the line was harder than they expected and downwind angles were challenging, but they enjoyed Italy so sympathy was limited.
Recently-crowned European Champion Nick Craig started with an uncharacteristic capsize tacking in Race 1, and then nailed a couple of wins to look good, but Charlie Chandler was showing fantastic speed downwind and the lead was changing often between the two of them. Starts were important with starboard bias and a general benefit to the right hand side of the course, and a few OCS results crept in to the second race. Class secretary Jon Hammond managed an OCS after missing the first race fiddling with his new boat and then went back ashore to see his girlfriend, leaving an interesting scoreline of acronyms but no doubt focused entirely on the AGM admin.
Overnight it was tight at the top between Nick and Charlie, with a three-way tie for third between Giles Chipperfield, Robin Foster-Taylor and Tim Garvin. Tim's contribution was a little questionable after some creative application of the rules, but we put it down to a defective moral compass fitting and moved on to join the CCSC chilli and games night with traditional enthusiasm. It's possible that the D1 class team even won that event, beating hot competition from the Scorpion fleet and bunch of 8 year old children, but no-one can really remember, and that may be for the best.
After a short postponement the gradient wind kicked back in on Sunday, but a bit softer and shiftier, leaving the Nick/Charlie battle finely poised. Upwind their speed seemed pretty even, but Charlie was a bit quicker downwind and Giles, Robin and Chris were all going fast enough to get into the top results and confuse things in races 4 and 5. In the end Nick won the last race, but Charlie's second was enough to win by a couple of points.
So congratulations to our new National Champion Charlie Chandler, and thanks to our sponsors Sandiline, Harken and Noble Marine for splendid prizes. It was great to race our friends from as far apart as Cornwall and Norfolk, and thanks to you all for making the trip. Special thanks to Castle Cove's race committee and galley team for a really superb event, and it was a pleasure for our fleet to be part of such a successful local regatta: thank you for accommodating us so well.
Next stop for the D1 fleet is the Lymington open in August, after which many of us will be heading for the Gold Cup in Austria to see how we're getting on against the rapidly growing eastern European fleets. Charter boats for the Gold Cup are available as usual from www.suntouched.co.uk if anyone else out there is tempted to join us for a lot of fun.
GBR
GBR
