Winter Series, Day 1 14th June 2020.

What a day, I left home in St Albans with hardly a breath of wind, picked up the dinghy which had been stored at Graeme’s place, got to Westlake to find a chilly north, north easterly wind, with the odd strong blow coming through.
Help was there to unpack and set up the dinghy & marks and with good advice from the shore we set a medium sized course, all was done within an hour. We had 13 boats and skippers arrive and started racing a little prior to 1.30pm, got through 8 races before a few clouds appeared and sheltered the sun which was getting kind of low, as things cooling off a bit, we finished up around 3pm having completed 8 races. There were a few tangles and rescues over the other side of the lake, but all in all a good day was had by all.
At the last minute we decided not to keep a written registration sheet of entries but instead entered everyone directly into Afleet on the tablet, made it very quick and simple while still giving us a record of those attending. Finishing in Afleet is a simple as a short tap on the sail number to finish a boat or a long tap to get options such as DNS or DNF and the results are immediate, ready for sharing out via email, no saving, no transferring files at all.
Thanks to all those who participated, it was great to see good interest in our “relaxed” event, we had numerous people view our sailing and it was real pleasing to see our behaviour was exemplary as usual, this year we didn’t let the community know we were sailing but still attracted a fairly good audience and some pleasing comments.
Leon Blewett,
Race Officer day one.