Saturday, May 12, Saundersfoot SSC hosts CYRC Meeting

CYRC is not, as you may imagine, archaic Welsh or even something important in Albania. It stands for Club Youth Racing Circuit and is the brain-child of the WYA (Welsh Yachting Association). It is a race meeting which tours the local sailing clubs and aims to give young sailors experience of competing on unfamiliar waters and against their peers from other sailing clubs. For reasons not understood by Ancient Mariner, this, the first meeting of the 2007 season, was laid on by Saundersfoot Sailing Club as a last minute goodwill gesture, and was not promoted as it should have been. Nevertheless, 10 visiting young sailors turned up to take on six of our own youngsters and enjoyed an exciting day's sailing in which no class was decided until the last race. The weather conditions played their part in adding to the excitement - a force 4 SW wind gusting markedly is not a comfortable place to be in any sort of dinghy, let alone the Optimists and Topper fleets prominent here. It was fairly lumpy out there, but the youngsters took it in their stride. Class results were: Optimist (four entrants): 1. William Morris; 2. Harry Upton; 3. Rachel Tudor (SSC). Topper (nine entrants): 1. Michael Beckett; 2. James North (SSC); 3. Jonathan Morris (TSC). Handicap fleet (three entrants): 1. Stephen Beckett (Laser Radial); 2. Alex and Joel Kirk (RS Feva); 3. Ben Dancer (Byte) (SSC). Our sincere thanks to all the helpers, race officers, patrol boats, Sue Groves and Bodil Humphries for the haut cuisine (BBQ), the CYRC Series sponsors (First Milk) and to Rowan Tree Rosettes for adding that final equestrian flourish to a meeting enjoyed by all participants. On Sunday, they can all turn out and do it again at the second CYRC meeting to be held at Tenby SC. Club Racing

Club racing on Sunday was a non-event. After many weeks among the walking wounded, Ancient Mariner finally got to run a club race, flew 'abandon' to the sincere gratitude of the patrol boat crews and everyone went home. The club marks were invisible in the general murk, and it is not wise to run a race when competitors cannot see where they have to go and race officials cannot see where they have gone. A threatened Easterly Force 6 would have blown everyone into surf of boat- wrecking proportions and better safe than sorry. Not a difficult decision - in fact, no trouble at all. Come and Try Sailing

Saundersfoot SC is holding an Open Day tomorrow (Saturday) from 1 pm onwards. Members of the public (eight years of age and over) are invited, weather permitting, to don a life-jacket and be taken out in a variety of club dinghies by our qualified sailing instructors. There is no charge and no compulsion to become a club member - just a health warning. Dinghy sailing is always full of interest and frequently exhilarating. Like MRSA, the bug is almost impossible to eradicate.

Ancient Mariner