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SigneT Open at Grafham Water 26 June 2004 |
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Grafham Water can be pretty lively and is one of the largest inland sailing lakes in the UK. This open was incorporated within the Bedfordshire vs. Cambridgeshire 2004 Regatta. |
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Our SigneT's were entered under Paxton Lakes SC, just down the road (i.e. the A1) from Grafham. As such we sailed for the Cambridgeshire team, at least on paper, and the SigneT Open was calculated as a race within a race. Is this making sense? |
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Keith & Madeline Hatton and I left Stoneleigh, with Over Easy in tow, a little after 07:00 and headed off around the M25 to pick up the A1. When we arrived a couple of hours later quite a number of dinghies were already there including ST368 with Richard Cannon and his crew Robert. |
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For the purposes of the regatta the dinghies were split, by PYS, into fast & slow handicap fleets. The fast fleet had 33 boats while the slow had 45. Our SigneT's sail off 1265 so were of course in the slow fleet. Three one hour races were scheduled, one in the morning and a further two, back to back, in the afternoon. The fast fleet sailed well away to the left of the Grafham SC clubhouse so I'm not sure what type of course they sailed. |
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Our fleet sailed opposite the clubhouse around a trapezoidal course. This was made up of four marks, all to Port, plus a start and finish line set between marks four and one and formed by a committee boat and outer distance marker. This gate had to be gone through every lap; it was long for the mass start and shortened for the rest of the race. |
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Throughout the day I suppose the wind was 3 gusting 4. The wind, blowing from the SW, pushing up bit of a swell on the water and generally it was overcast. The course turned out to be great. Every point of sailing was covered with the use of spinnakers possible on two, sometimes three, of the course legs. |
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We had a great sail. The only down point of the day was ST368 being hit by a Pico which left a small hole in her Starboard side. AQSC had two boats in the top three SigneT's home with ST369 coming 3rd and ST368 1st, so not a bad day! |
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Mike (Over Easy) Baker |