QMSC inlands

Just had a great weekend at Queen Mary for the inlands. While the turnout was down, the fun was up and some great racing was had with new Ninja rider Chris Rashley taking three wins on the Saturday and after looking for and failing to find my foiling wings I then took the only race on Sunday.

Chris, Ben Paton and Tom Offer had some cracking racing on the Saturday with plenty of place changing and some close finishes in 10-15 knots. I meanwhile was busy with trying to remember how to sail having amassed about 5 hours on the water since October. I missed the first race with a minor pushrod problem, I also had far too much rake meaning whenever I fluffed a tack (often!) the boat would stick head to wind and stay there until I dumped the kicker altogether and reversed off... Regardless, I was very pleased with the boats performance given it was it's first day on the water and by the end of the races I was motoring and rapidly making up for my mistakes.

Saturday night saw the QM Ninja death squad lead us off into Staines for a fantastic curry buffet and as much rum, Jaegermeister and whiskey as Tom could handle!

Sunday looked breathless, but come race time a patchy 5-8 knot breeze floated in meaning we could fit in one race before the sun came out and the breeze evaporated. I was pleased to find the new foils were up the the usual Ninja light air abilities, taking the race by over 5 minutes from Ben, Tom, then Chris.

I'm very pleased with the new boat and will go over it a bit in a future post. A few batten changes have improved the mk2 Ellway sail and improved it in a bit more breeze and it's still excellent in the lighter airs. The new foils feel good and I'm looking forward to getting some hours in and seeing what they can do.

I'm also pleased to see Chris, Ben and Tom all sailing well, having put in a lot of time on the water over the winter and Chris winning his first Moth open.

Meanwhile, somewhere on the south coast, the Wailing Islanders (W.I. For short) couldn't pluck up enough enthusiasm to leave their sandy playpen and drive an hour up the road...