Race Report by Greg Eaton
A beautiful early Summer evening with a agreeable breeze and sufficient water saw the Second annual competition for the Radio Sailing Yoke between Emsworth Sailing Club and Emsworth Slipper Sailing Club.
As most ERS members know there is a friendly rivalry between ESC and ESSC ('Slipper') members, and every year there are matches between both clubs across a range of disciplines (yacht, dinghy, team and radio sailing) - Monday 3rd June was the date for the DF-95 match.
ESC were hosts this year, and were looking forward to the 'home advantage', however given the forecast light NW'ly, Alan Perry, PRO
took the correct decision to relocate to their club to enable a better beat. Things did not start well for ESC; with Greg first to launch, he promptly run aground and then realised he hadn't fitted the bung correctly.
Sailing a 'J to Port', 'D to port', 'K to port' course as either a couple of triangles, triangle sausage or just a triangle on the lightest of starts, the racing was close,
but sailed in a friendly competitive spirit. Getting off the start line cleanly was key, and it got harder as the evening wore on as the starboard end became increasingly more favoured, especially with the wind-bend around the lake wall.
Proving themselves masters of the conditions were Dave Cockerill and Chris Treagust (sailing this year for Slipper), however with a scoring system that counted the first 5/7 in each race, ESC managed to pack the middle successfully winning the event by 7 races to 1 and a total of 190 points to 272
Thanks to ESC for the post match refreshments, Alan as RO, Paul as scorer and Tom as mark-layer and to the various supporters of both clubs who cheered on their respective teams.
Same again (hopefully with a bit more breeze) next year!
Team Slipper:
Dave Cockerill, Rod Carr, Simon Dwyer, John Galyer, Martin Price, Denis Spencer, Chris Treagust
Team ESC
Jonny Hepworth, Mark Allerston, Greg Eaton, John Derbyshire, Bill Tucker, Jerry White, Dave Acres and super-sub Ian Budgen and reserve Russ Payne.
