Hi all,

yes no sailing Monday, foggy and no wind till 11am . Then with racing cancelled the wind came up from the North East, one of the best directions for Hazelwood (not so gusty)10-15 knots, best of the weekend, but no sailing . Such is life .

It was a great weekend, with occasional trapezing winds both days , so not bad by Sauna Sail standard. I had some great races with Matt, he did well when you consider I have been sailing at Hazelwood for 45 years wind never really got going long enough for the F16's and 18's, but they did show us what they are capable of at times.

Trev looked very pleased with his win, ahead of Tim and Pete . Rumour has it he is going to stop picking up kids off the beach and sail on his own more often , he reckons cat rig sailing is easy now .

Yep, Gordon, Phillip and I all agree that Cat rigged is too easy, so we are going back to sloop for more of a challenge

It was a pity about Monday, but the rest of the weekend was good. Most of us were never becalmed, eh Pete? so it came down to a good weekend enhanced by sailing.

Those of you who didnt make it also missed another fantastic meal put on by the Association. Thanks Di and everyone else that lent a hand.

I did a blow-by-blow account on the VMCA website so I'll reproduce it here. This is the bit of the course I was on, so sorry I don't really know what was going on elsewhere.

Once again, not much breeze but enough to get the bum over the side occasionally and fit in four races on Saturday and Sunday. Monday had the best breeze but not until the time limit for the start was up, so no racing on Monday. Saturday night a spectacular roast was cooked up by Di Floyd and her assistants, with sticky-date pudding to follow – ahhhh! Thanks Di.
Gary, Matt and Daniel sailed in the cats with spinnaker division, against Vipers (including defector Mick Floyd) and F18s, while the other eleven Mosquitoes sailed in their own division. Gordon Philip and Trevor all decided to take the handbrake off this weekend and left their jibs at home. They decided after the weekend that Mk1 sailing is too easy and will be putting the jib back on in future.
The following is a blow-by-blow account of what went on in and around the front of the Mosquito division. Maybe someone else can fill in what happened elsewhere.

There was some confusion in the first race Saturday. An obviously port-hand course was laid but the committee boat had the green flag up! The majority of the 150 boats decided the flag was a mistake (or just didn't look) and sailed a port hand course. Tim and Neil set out to do a starboard hand course but through the ensuing confusion ended up deciding to sail a port hand course anyway. Simon and Stephen stuck to their guns and sailed a starboard hand course but somehow managed to make it shorter - something went wrong there! Trevor managed to keep focused through all this and lead Peter to the finish line - although Peter started another lap instead of finishing which allowed Neil and Tim to slip through.

The second race was Peter’s and Philip’s to begin with but Neil and Tim were pushing hard. Tim was able to point too high for Neil & Philip and found a way through while Philip fought off the challenge from Neil. Meanwhile Peter made no mistakes and crossed the line first. 30 seconds separated each of these four boats with Trevor only 7 secs behind Neil and Gordon only 15 secs behind him!

Sunday morning, the fog cleared as we headed out to the start. There was just enough breeze to cross the line when the start came. A small puff just before the start was enough to push Tim over the line too early. After re-rounding the start boat through the midst of the lasers lining up for their start (how could there be enough room for a Mosquito to get through?) Tim then sailed in a private breeze straight past the fleet to reach the top mark first, leading Peter down the first reach. At the wing mark the wind died and the fleet piled up, Peter sneaking through now in front of Tim and Trevor. The second reach turned into a beat and this time Trevor had the opportunity to sneak through between Tim and Peter, but Peter managed to recover and round the final mark just ahead of Trevor. On the long starboard tack to the finish line Trevor and Tim sailed over the top of a frustrated Peter to finish 1,2.

Sunday afternoon was the best breeze and the only race run with the full three laps. This quickly turned into a competition between Trevor Peter and Tim. Halfway through Trevor was a 100m or so in front and Peter and Tim were side by side on the run discussing how to catch Trevor. Well, Trevor had other ideas and continued to extend his lead to end up winning with the biggest margin of the weekend. Tim stole 2nd from Peter with a final tack to the far wall just before the finish line, which ended up reflecting the final overall placings – Trevor, Tim then Peter. Well done Trevor.

Gary and Matt finished 1st and 2nd respectively in the spinnaker division (11 boats) with Daniel a point behind a Viper in 4th. Once again LVYC forgot to drop a race from the results, but this didn’t affect the divisions with Mosquitoes in them very much (bad luck for division 3 though!).