Tasmanian Marblehead State Championship

After a terriffic day's sailing yesterday, we could only hope for more of the same today - and the sailing gods delivered in spades for us. Starting out on B rigs with a good northerley comingthrough at about 10 knots, lightening to a change to A rigs after lunch, with a nor-westerley coming through, dropping to about 3 knots and increasing again towards the end of the day to about 8 knots.

Weed was also largely missing today, which allowed us to complete a great weekend of "champagne sailing".  Certainly putting on its best show for our visitors from the north of the state (surely Ted can't be considered a visitor now though) and Queensland.

Fourteen races completed today, to make 30 for the championship. By lunch time, Ray had faltered a little bit, and his 3 point lead fromt he day before turned into a deficit, with Kyle taking the lead. Stu Dawes and Lisa Blackwood had some electrical issues, unfortunately with Lisa bowing out of the event early in the day.

After lunch, Ray had a good shot of energy, and stormed back, fighting neck and neck with Kyle for the lead, but with Ray's final 5 races netting just 8 points to Kyle's 15, it was enough to secure a =nother championship win for Ray, winning with 71 points.

Kyle came in second, just two points adrift on 73, with Stuart Dawes takng out the third place on the podium with 93 points.

Looking over the results, it was interesting to see that 6 skippers had race wins, and everyone enjoyed multiple races in the top 3.

We were again blessed with volunteer help today, and with some of the reliability issues, were needed for some rescues. Big thanks to Michael Hickman, Ian Hey, Phil Turnbull and Lisa Blackwood (after having to retire from the event).

Special thanks must go to Les Hanson, for his efforts as PRO over the two days. A fantastic effort.

Thank you also to all the competitors. Racing was at times fierce, but always int he righ spirit, and I am sure everyone came out of the weekend having enjoyed it.

Again, we had a lot of spectators watching the events unfold, showing the importance of being the example we strive for, which we should all be able to agree was upheld very well all weekend.

Coming up

Wednesday is IOM Mid Week Handicap at the dam, starting at 11am.

Next Sunday is a slight change to the regular program, with IOM Scratch at Montrose Bay at 1pm (remember, daylight savings will ahve started then). The DF95 that was schedulled for next week will be rescheduled soon, so the scratch event will still occur.

The week after, October 8th is the IOM Southern Championship at Montrose. If interested in sailing, please get your entries in as soon as possible. At the conclusion of this event, we will be having  some nibbles and presentations, so please if you can, let's see you there to support some big milestones for the club.

Kyle