Twenty pilots registered for what was looking like a non-event, with very light winds and a NNE direction for the Saturday and even less wind with a multi-directional wind Sunday.

On a positive note it was dry!

First thing Saturday morning we set about cordoning off the race area to prevent public access across the zone and set up the race trailer, “just in case”.

Minutes turned into hours whilst we waited for any wind, whilst partaking in cups of tea, witty banter and gay repartis, as well as taking the ****!

Briefing was held at 11am when Race Officer Ed Delahaye confirmed we would be splitting the fleet into Production and Performance, as well as delaying for another hour with the hope of an increase in the wind.

The course was laid with the start line in the middle of the beach, set for a downwind start with one downwind and one upwind mark.

After a few aborted races due to the wind dropping off, we eventually managed a full production race.

Following this we had a few more aborted races.

Finally at about 14.45pm the breeze began to lift, without further ado Ed and Sharon expertly managed to organise eight races back to back with the whole fleet taking part.

The conditions were tricky, what with shifting winds, both in direction and strength and the condition of the beach around the downwind mark.

This saw some exciting racing as positions were changing constantly, with the conditions favouring the lighter amongst us!

Between each race we had to change the position of the downwind mark as the dry sand was cutting up making it more difficult to round, this in turn affected the racing as pilots had to adjust their previous lines.

Getting eight races in meant we were allowed two discards, which meant that Davey Hare, who was flying around, could drop two of his three second places which gave him 1st place in the overall fleet.

Chris Moore followed in second in fleet, Nick Trollope third and Joe Nathan a commendable fourth.

It must be noted though that none of these had been handicapped by being involved in a collision with “The Bognor Basher” aka Dave Hicks.

Dave Cooke was the first production cart in the fleet coming in at seventh, ahead of a number of performance carts.

It was great to see some new faces at Weston namely Darren Pellegrino, travelling up from Eastbourne and Michael Sharrod part of the East Anglia Massive!

When the races were broken down into class and weight categories, the results were as follows.

Lightweight production

1st  David Cooke

2nd Darren Pellegrino

Middle Production

1st Nigel Owen

2nd Gareth Jones

Heavy Production

1st Michael Sharrod

Light Performance

1st David Hare

2nd Joe Nathan

3rd David Finch

Middle Performance

1st Chris Moore

2nd Lauren McGavin

3rd David Hicks

4th Wayne Turner

5th Jamie Brittain

Heavy Performance

1st Nick Trollope

2nd Andy Hartwell

3rd Roger Jackson

4th Adrian Chalkley

So once again, a successful B race, it certainly pays to ignore the forecast sometimes, not to weather watch prior to the event and to stick it out till the end!

Finally, many thanks to Ed and Sharon Delahaye for running the races so effectively.

Nick Trollope – K173