OK, where to start ?   Half the fleet went to the World Championships in Switzerland, where there was no wind and it was rubbish. Then they came back to find that wasn't much better here really, but quite a lot cheaper and much closer.

Sticking with the continental theme, we went Italian for the fleet meal which was an excellent bash, with loads of people turning up to eat pizza  and bid farewell to Mary. Then came the 2 days of the Marriott Bucket, which was unaccountably won by Mike Shreeve with a variety of crews. Mike also won the Firebowl earlier in 2007, so wasn't supposed to win this one as well. Still, it can only be a good thing when an ancient boat gets to win stuff, and well done also to James and Peter Wood who came a close second and are doubtless justifiably proud of this….

Ancient boats winning stuff brings us neatly on to the fleet championships, where a couple of blokes took a bargain basement 17 year old boat that they'd bought 'for fun', threw some 8 year old sails onto it that they 'had lying around', and promptly won the event with 2 races to spare. OK, so the boat in question was the legendary 'Rockers Revenge', forged long ago in the fires of Mount Doom, and the blokes (Martin Lewis and Richard Byne) did have a bit of 'previous'. But all in all it was enough to make you sympathise with Saruman when he got taken apart by a couple hobbits and some shrubbery. We'd got the massed army of white Winders, the kevlar sails, Cumulus masts, trolls, goblins etc, and we still got trashed. Duh !

Somewhere in the middle of all this came our open meeting, which was also windless, but still interesting. 62 boats turned out in spite of the conditions (which is more than attended the Nationals), and the racing was good, courtesy of our Solo/Miracle OD team. We managed to show the Rugby match on the big screen in the evening, gave out loads of prizes at the end, and everyone went away happy. Well done to Ian Western and Keith Bundy who won the prize for 1^st Draycote boat, or would have done if we'd been able to find it.

That's pretty much it now for 2007. Both of our Winter Series are under way (running alternate Sundays), and there's only the Christmas meal / prizegiving to come. This will be on Saturday the 8^th of December at 7:30, contact Helen or the club office for more details and tickets. Wives, girlfriends families and friends are all welcome, along with any other club members who feel the urge to join us. And if you've got any of our prizes, we need them returning immediately please to Paul Disney so we can hand them out to the new winners. I didn't win any at all this year, and Bob Morris lost the 'Early Bird' trophy on the last race, basically because he didn't cover James Wood closely enough. He says he should have started when they were in the changing rooms….

Mike Deane – FB14778