There were 19 skippers from 11 clubs to sail in this first race of the PRACC 2008 season. The weather forecast for this day would not have won a prize for accuracy. We had expected 17mph winds from the SW. What we got was very different. I arrived at the lake thankful to find a steady 10mph SW breeze down the length of the Rick pond . . perfect the PRO’s dream scenario. But it didn’t last. Throughout the day the wind drifted steadily northwards until in early afternoon it forced us to add two extra buoys to maintain some windward sailing. What is more, instead of being over powered as forecast, the boats were searching for wind. Despite all this we got through 8 race pairs, although the last race developed into a drifting competition and we terminated the sailing 10mins before the planned stop at 16.00.

    We were without Peter Wiles on this occasion, leaving opportunity for others to be winners and we were not disappointed. Peter Fothergill remained a favourite throughout the day. Derek Priestley had a late start and radio problems in early races. The Binks boys were also absent from early good results but discards sorted this problem for them and by the finish Ken and Peter Fothergill had equal scores. At the prize giving, I awarded Peter the overall first place on count back as he had a fourth to Ken’s 5^th place. On later studying the HMS 2006 rules this was probably an error. It seems that a 1^st place in a seeding race cannot be used in a count back situation so Ken was the winner according to HMS 2006. I don’t know what the PRACC rules are and I’ll leave that to David Munro to sort out. However there were prizes for the best 9 places, and so I am sure all winners went away happy.