MBYC A Class Pennant Round 1

With the Sunday Scratch Racing slots filling up - and not wanting to dilute the amount of sailing for other classes on the Sunday, it was decided that MBYC host an A Class Pennant series for 2024, with sail days approximately monthly on a Saturday.

We will continue to support this series so long as we keep getting enough support from the membership as far as numbers turning up.

Initially to be held at MBYC, but moved to Risdon Brook after the damage to the floating pontoon (we hope to have news of when it may return to service in the next week or so).

Five skippers turned up for the day today, with a warm welcome back to John Cole-Cook, who has been sunning himself in Qld for a number of months.

Initially a light ESE breeze for the first half a dozen races, causing us to start with a downwind start and keeping away from bioys 1 and 2, but the course worked very well for us all.

Lisa got off to a cracking start, winning the first two races, but Rod Marshall soon found his mojo and took out races 3 and 4.

John took out race 5 in a real close one, before Kyle came through with his first win in 6.

Lisa returned with a win in 7 before Kyle found an extra bit of boat speed (or tacked correctly finally) and took out the last two races of the day.

Results are always one thing, but they never really show how close the sailing actually is. We all commented on how pleasurable the conditions were, and how much fun it was with our various tacking duels heading upwind.

In all, it was a fantastic day of A Class sailing.

That said, Kyle came out winner of the day today, with 12 points, one ahead of Lisa on 13 and John in third on 16 points.

Again, the day was very enjoyable, with everyone helping each other to try and extract the best out of all the yachts. Today showed that all the yachts are really evenly matched and competitive, with on-water tactics often being the edge required to get up the placings on that particular race.

We have round 2 of our A Class Pennant on Saturday, 10th February. While there are quite a few owners of the A Class yachts and we hope they are able to make it to round 2, we also have a few other A Class yachts available for anyone who would like to have a sail.

Coming up

Tomorrow is IOM Scratch at the Dam, starting at 1pm, followed by IOM Mid Week Handicap on Wednesday, button press at 11am.

Kyle