McRae cat regatta

For the first time in living memory (at least this one), the McRae Cat regatta was run in steady light winds for the whole weekend this year. It never strayed far from 8-10 knots from the Northeast with flat water, and the course was a triangle followed by two windward-leeward laps and a final triangle to finish downwind at the bottom of the course. Three races were run each day. In such light wind the Mozzies with spinnakers were able to use them on six out of the ten legs of every race, which made them pretty well unbeatable. Bob Wilson was there and the closest he got was in race 5 when he finished 36 seconds behind on corrected time (with the spinnaker Mozzies sailing to the old handicap of 79.5).

In division 2 we had a fine turnout of eleven Mosquitoes - Tim Sheppard, Matt Stone, Robert Wilson, Mick Floyd, Garry Johnstone, Robert Lott, Mitch Meade, James Pearse, Andrew Neeson, Nic Baglioni, & Gordon Hyde. Most had their moments of glory. Mitch & Nic both found their way to the front of the fleet on occasion, and Bob made a super-human effort to keep up with one sail too few. Matt just kept improving over the weekend, and scored some well deserved wins on his brand-new Mosquito "Unko" - the first out of the JK Fibreglass factory. Simon Clavin's boat was not ready in time for the weekend (bad boat!) so he busied himself in the rescue boat on Saturday and being McRae's only shore crew on Sunday. The video Simon recorded on Saturday will be coming to youtube soon (the link will be here when it's done). Philip Warren-Smith was unable to get the weekend off, but he did put in a celebrity appearance on the course on Sunday, and without him a few of us would have been lodging in the back of our cars for the night - thanks Philip.

In the "overall" results (calculated by various unknown means) the Mosquitoes were looking both good and bad after Saturdays racing. Tim was clearly in front with 3 wins and Matt was lying 4th behind two A-classes, but the first Mozzie without spinnaker, Bob, was down in 12th spot. This was to be expected, it being too light for the Mosquito to be able to perfom but ideal conditions to get a lot of benefit from the spinnaker. Although the conditions were identical on Sunday, the wheels fell off the Mosquito campaign machine, with best performers Matt averaging around 7th and Bob averaging around 15th. This left us with Tim at the top of the Mosquitoes in 5th place and Bob being the first non-spinnaker Mosquito in 12th.