Huntingdon RYC DF95 Open, EDCS3 – 5th October

From far and wide skippers travelled to be with us for our 3^rd DF95 open event, after a couple of last-minute cancellations 16 skippers presented themselves to Noel Donaldson who gratefully signed them all on.

Once again, a splendid array of cakes was available to welcome our travelling skippers.

RO Martin Brooking (and club commodore) welcomed the rather chirpy rabble, which included one loony wearing shorts in October!!! (but we wont mention that Derek) a briefing was completed, and racing started almost immediately.

The wind was superb A rig weather all day, with a few fruity gusts thrown in for good measure.

A pretty usual upwind mark with a spreader down to a leeward gate course had been set on the Friday in preparation for the day, of course the wind hadn’t behaved so the course did need a slight tweak before racing started at 10.00am.

A single race was completed allowing for those final adjustments, then the RO set the racing off in sets of 3 races, with some comfort breaks included.

9 races were completed by lunchtime where Nigel Barrow had already set himself up in first placed followed by Peter Baldwin (13 points behind) and closely followed by Derek Preistley in third.

During a sunny and warm lunch, the gathered skippers were particularly pleased with the Red Arrows fly past that we had organised, in fact they cheered so loud, the jets did a return pass!!!

A further ten races were completed in the afternoon session, as with the morning all in a really friendly manner, with some good banter between the skippers, our youngster, Hayden Wallace came alive in the afternoon (well he managed to avoid getting hit/weed) and pulled off 2 wins, well done young man!!

We also had two very new members join in the racing, (well, they were pressed into it) both stated they had had a great day of racing with lots of tips and encouragement from the fleet, it would be great in 2025 if other clubs encouraged this.

With the final race completed just after 3.30pm it was time to pack the kit away and present the prizes

Nigel Barrow – Frensham Pond 1^st place

Peter Baldwin – Birkenhead 2^nd place

Derek Priestley – Fleetwood 3^rd place

Andy Baldock – Huntingdon 4^th Place

Our Trier of the day was awarded to John Doe – Huntingdon RYC

I am sure pictures from the event will be loaded up onto our Facebook page soon

Huntingdon Radio Yacht Club (St Ives) Cambridgeshire | Facebook

And a movie of the event will also be uploaded to our YouTube channel in the near future

Andy Start

Eastern District Racing Secretary