Rakaia Fun Day & BBQ Review.

What a day, it started off with a nice gentle nor west wind and was perfect. Around 10.30am everything went absolutely still & quiet, not a good sign, then the predicted southerly struck, cool and strong. I think Peter measured it at 17 knots(?). The lagoon had small white caps and it really looked like it would be just too much for any Canterbury J. Quite disappointing.
An IOM launched on a B rig and went quite nicely then one, then a second Canterbury J launched and they managed pretty OK. The weather gods must have started smiling when they saw what we were doing and the southerly dropped quite quickly and left us with a challenging but very nice breeze, the temperature climbed back up too. We had 11 Canterbury J’s, two IOM’s and a DF65 all doing two laps of a medium sized course.
We did use a start box but no results were taken and the day passed a relaxed but keenly contested way.
The pre lunch sailing went pretty quick and we retired to Leon and Heather place for BBQ lunch, a few had a the odd repair to do and upgrade or two were also done and we continued after lunch when the sea breeze kicked in providing ideal sailing conditions.
The Little Rakaia Boat club and the local community have introduced to buoys to the lagoon that mark the upper lagoon as 5 knots only and the boats that departed or returned were really well behaved and we had no interference at all.
A number of local residents came to watch and the comments afterwards were really positive and they look forward to next year.

Thanks to Leon and Heather for once again providing their hospitality.