It has been a hectic few weeks for our sailors both here and at other events around West Wales. Three of our Laser Radial sailors travelled to Dale to take part in the Laser Welsh Open Championships and enjoyed a lovely sunny day with lightish winds. All three acquitted themselves well, with Ben Roberts finishing in sixth place and Hywel Jackson taking time off from his safety boat practice to finish a creditable ninth place overall, while the conditions were perhaps a little light for James Roberts in the third boat, but we are sure he was concentrating on looking after the youngsters so well done all.

Also competing at other events and recording highly creditable third and fourth places at the Mumbles and PYC CYRC events in his Topper has been Aled Llewellyn Jones continuing the success of the club’s youngsters and making sure to keep the more established sailors on their toes.

A lot of this success must be attributed to the youngsters own endeavours, plus the encouragement and training provided and offered by the club’s own sail training section, principally Jo and Malcolm and the latest batch of youngsters have just completed their stage 2 and level 2 RYA qualifications to include Archie and Louie Treadaway-Williams, plus Jon Whittingham and Lees Simpson so well done to all of them.

After a light, but sunny day on Saturday, our normal club racing continued on the Sunday with much fresher conditions, as usual when Dave ‘wind-God’ Plester is on duty, always guaranteed to be either a drifter or an adrenaline blast around the bay. In this case, the latter, and after some deliberation, a hardy fleet of eight competitors set sail on a broad reach to Amroth followed by a very long beat to the outfall buoy and then another broad reach back to the harbour.

As might be expected, there were a few thrills and spills on the way; our intrepid Bosun made his second appearance of the season in a well-reefed Laser 2000 with ex-fireman Andy - were they expecting difficulties, rumour was it that they were practicing for the Long Course Weekend presumably the swimming section but they were not alone. The two Contenders of Maurice and Simon revelled in the conditions taking first and second place respectively, while behind them Paul and Julia in the 200 had a real tussle with Keith in his Laser Radial with Keith prevailing on this occasion.

A few of the more mature sailors (you know who you are) decided to give the second race a miss, and with a few late arrivals the fleet set off on a slightly altered course, but in freshening winds even more to the liking of the boys in the Contenders and also to Paul and Julia in the 200 who enjoyed some cracking reaches with the gennaker and avoided mooring up to any of the buoys on this occasion, again Maurice took the honours ahead of Simon recording his fifth win in a row in defence of his title from 2015, in third place was the careering RS200 just ahead of Hywel to finish off his busy weekend.

This is the penultimate weekend of the main club racing season with the final two races being on September 25 before the start of the frostbite series and Maurice is busy totting up the overall scores to date as we speak .

As a break next weekend, we have our annual Bart’s Bash event on Saturday and great day is planned with a spectacular race in the bay starting at 1730 with somewhere in the region of 30 boats, plus some Viking longboats marauding the seas in the guise of the Wiseman’s Bridge Rowers join in. There are fancy dress prizes and prizes for the first overall, first junior, cruise and Viking Longboat, all under the watchful eye of Keith Jones as race officer, plus a fleet of safety craft although whether they will be in fancy dress as well remains to be seen, following this in the clubhouse we have a BBQ and fundraising evening so come along and enjoy what is going to be a great day.

Just a few word of support and encouragement also to Hywel Jackson , who as well as sailing his Laser has as previously recorded qualified for the RYA Honda Rib Challenge at the Southampton Boat Show on the weekend of September 25 as a result of Hywel winning the Welsh qualifying event a short while ago, Hywel has been busy practicing with Malcolm over the last few weeks and we wish him every success in his appearance at Southampton.

Dizzy Rascals