DF95 Mid Week Handicap

We had a glorious summer’s day, 28 degrees, clear blue skies, and a lovely 8-10 knots of sea breeze at Risdon Brook Dam for our first DF95 handicap event for the year. Seventeen boats was a great fleet especially considering that quite a few skippers are away on holiday. ​

The wind was South Westerly but a steady 5 or 6 knots when we arrived but the sea breeze filled in gradually to provide excellent sailing conditions. Andrew Wardrop was again our PRO for the day and as usual set great courses and kept the day moving well so that we could complete 11 races. Thanks Andrew.

This year we are trialling a group start handicap system. I have colour coded the results below so that each of the starting groups appear as a different colour. If you can’t understand it then at least it looks pretty. 

Some of the finishes were extremely close. Maybe that was good handicapping or maybe it was just that sort of day. One race was so close that  Andrew couldn’t pen the results fast enough. So for race 6 those skippers who finished after position 10 were given their average points for that race.

It was an excellent day for the front markers. 1st to 4th places were taken by skippers starting with a 15 second handicap penalty. Rod Marshall was todays winner after winning three races back-to-back. (Some sort of hat trick?). Rod gave me a wink on the way out and said that the new handicap system has some potential! Alan Short was second overall and he also had back-to-back wins at the end of the day. Malcolm Watson who was visiting from the North of the State enjoyed his day by taking out third place overall with a consistent scorecard. 

Congratulations also go to Simon Delaney who won his first race with the club after a lead all the way around effort. Well done Simon - the first of many wins to come!

Handicap change depends upon a skippers podium appearances. Rod and Alan dominated the podium today and so are promoted to the next start group for our next meet. Jammy and Scott sailed all day without podium success and get relegated to a lower start group for the next event.

All up a great day out and a good start to the year.

Shorty