On Saturday morning the sailors awoke to a Northerly blast and were all on the beach wondering if the event was going to get underway as the start/rescue boat was unable to come near the shore to pick up any of the marks. After a small committee meeting it was decided that we should hold and see if the wind dropped. After a few hours of hanging around the wind dropped enough to get some racing underway, but there were still gusts of 55 knots coming through just to let the sailors know who was in charge.

The first race got underway with several of the sailors not even finishing as the wind decided to shift, but they made up for it in the next few races, but some of the sailors decided it was still safer to stay on the beach and not compete in the racing that day.
Laurence Carey had a great day showing the older sailors who was boss by winning all 5 races on the Saturday, sometimes by quite a margin, but on the Sunday Laurence Carey and Harry Reed were outdone by their lack of experience when Tim Wood told them it was unwise to remove their wristbands when they broke for lunch, but their youthful exuberance overcame their better judgment and they removed them and forgot to put them back on and were disqualified from Race 11 even though Harry Reed tried to do his Harry Potter impression (without his invisibility cloak) and tried to sneak up to the board and take them back hoping that nobody had noticed. (Wrong….. The lady has eyes in the back of her head…..)

There were a few collisions with Laurence Carey trying to sneak his way through at the mark and taking out both Darren Nicholas and Chris Bolt. Luke Watson also tried this tactic and took Alexander Stroh out at the mark. There was also a little controversy during Race 8 on Sunday with Paul Vliestra and Luke Watson having a Port/Starboard collision which damaged the board that Paul Vliestra was using. Paul felt that it was no longer safe to sail if Luke was still competing with his bash and barge mentality and withdrew from the event. It was a shame, as this was meant to be a showcase event to promote Slalom Racing, but overall it was still a good event.

Local sailor Dave Steele was showing his skills by not even using a start watch and getting some great results (that proves he can count to 60) with young William not very far behind both of whom beat old timer James Court as he was feeling too tired to compete on the Sunday. It was a close fought battle between Darren Nicholas and Chris Bolt with Darren coming out ahead, and Bernard Carey showing that persistence pays by beating Alexander Stroh.
The event was won by Laurence Carey who took 13 race wins from 15 (would have been 14 if he didn’t get himself disqualified) followed closely by Harry Reed. A comment was made that these guys should be giving the older sailors a yard head start for every years age difference.

We’d like say a big thanks to:

Bruce Spedding for organizing the event (hopefully it will become an annual event…..), Alex Dean and Marilyn Auton Wood for doing a lot of the hard work, and all the local sailors who came along to support the event
Brew’d Eastbourne, principle sponsor - for the great pizza’s and drinks vouchers, and the start/rescue boat
A’ND Distribution
Wild Winds
Watercooled Sports
NZSailing.net
Epic Surf
Ocean Sports
Pak’n’Save Petone
Eastbourne Fruit Supply
Eastbourne Sports and Service Club