GEORGE SAILING NEWS - To encourage the sailing of two-person boats, the George Lakes Yacht Club has scheduled a season long series for this purpose.

The first set of races in this series did not happen due to a storm, but on Sunday conditions were nearly at the other extreme with a very light south-easterly breeze providing scant motive power to the sailors.

Two short races were sailed though the last boat in race two took an hour and a half to finish.

There were six boats sailing double-handed - two Gypsies, two GP14s, a Dart18 and a Fireball. Three were sailing single handed.

Brian Musto, on a Laser, had the initial lead, followed by the GP14 of Malcolm Osborne and Henry Paine. After a bad first beat the Fireball of David Laing and Anthony Alant slowly caught up to take line honours. Similarly, the Dart of Hans Delport and Luchen America were also able to catch up and overtake towards the end to be the second double-hander to finish ahead of the Osborne GP14.

In the extremely light wind of the second race there were some retirements. The Osborne GP14 had to retire due to being in danger of sinking - a leak was causing excessive intake of water.

The Fireball finished after over an hour of sailing, ahead of the Lasers of Bill Turner and Bran Musto and the Dabchick of Conrad Holm. The GP14 of Kyle Koeries and Chris du Toit were the second double- hander to finish, ahead of the Gypsy of Guy Dormehl and Evelyn Osborne.

Scoring the double-handed boats on class handicaps gave the first race win to Malcolm Osborne (GP14), ahead of the Laing Fireball and the Koeries GP14.

In race two the Fireball and the Dormehl Gypsy got equal corrected times to share the race lead. This resulted in David Laing holding the lead for the two races sailed so far in this series.

For more information about George Lakes Yacht Club see its website, www.glyc.org.za or like its Facebook page, GLYC.

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