The wind, which got up to over 20 knots at times, provided tough sailing conditions, especially for the less experienced.
Three races were completed (by some). Each race finished in about 30 minutes as the boats were able to progress rapidly around the course. The senior fleet was competing for the Chris Thomas Trophy, while the juniors were sailing races counting towards the junior championships.
The junior fleet comprised two Optimists, two Tera Sports and four Dabchicks. In the first race, two Dabchicks were able to sail more to their boat's potential to finish ahead of the Tera Sport of Robyn Hellstrom - Chris Kennedy was first over the line, followed by Sage van Aardt. Applying boat handicap gave the race win to the Optimist of James Vonk, with Matthew de Villiers second and Hellstrom in third place. In the second race, the Dabchicks did not feature - fist over the line was Hellstrom, followed by Pia Marriotti also in a Tera Sport. Here De Villiers (Optimist) got the race win. Vonk had a bad race (fourth), so Hellstrom and Marriotti were second and third. The Teras finished the third race in the same order. Vonk had a better race this time to get the race win with De Villiers in second place.
The senior fleet comprised one Fireball, a Sonnet, a Dabchick, a GP14 and seven Lasers. The Fireball of David Laing and Mark Dee was uncontested at the front of this fleet, pulling quickly away to big leads in all three races. Behind there was close competition between the Dabchick, sailed by Jayan Smart, and the Laser 4.7s sailed by Georgou Divaris and John Marc Olivier.
In the first race, first to finish of these was Smart, followed seconds later by Divaris and Olivier.
In race two, once again Smart was able to extend a lead, to finish 30 seconds ahead of Oliver, with Divaris just behind. In race three, it was Olivier first to finish, just ahead of the Smart Dabchick with Divaris 20 seconds adrift.
Smart got the handicap race wins in race 1 and race 2, third in race 3 to lead in the Chris Thomas Series from Olivier. Skipper handicaps were not kind to Divaris, pushing him down to fifth. The Laing/Dee Fireball lies in third place, ahead of Ashleigh Hellstrom.
Ashleigh Hellstrom coped very well with the conditions, sailing a Laser 4.7 for the first time at GLYC in a strong wind.
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