Summer…..ah yes, I remember summer. The IFC in June was a great success, particularly if you happened to be in the Solo team. We put rather too many fat blokes into tiny boats and only managed 3^rd place over-all. Frankly I don't think anyone cared, we had a great day's racing in those funny wobbly little boats and are looking forward to doing even more badly in 2011.

Fast forward a few months, and the Marriott Bucket personal handicap event was the usual pile of randomness and incompetence smeared liberally over the 15 boats involved. Gordon's crew Luisa (aged about 7), wasn't fazed by the big flappy sail thing or the tippy boat thing or the hopeless helm thing, but did object to the spider in the boat. At the other end of the age spectrum, Pete Badham managed to hurt himself while trying to put his rudder on. Helen and Paul had a storming first day, acquiring a considerable points advantage over everyone else, and then apparently spent the 2^nd day trying a variety of different ways to throw it all away. Capsizing (twice) was probably their most effective weapon, but getting the spinnaker sheet over the end of the boom ran it a close second. Not to be outdone, Graham and Theresa managed to nosedive their boat on a spinnaker reach and had a nice swim round it as a result. When the results were in, it transpired that Helen and Paul had narrowly failed to lose the lead and had in fact won The Bucket by 1 point from Richard and Kris.

Onwards then to the open meeting, which was a big success simply by virtue of attracting 44 boats - a very respectable number by recent standards. Regrettably this just meant that there were more boats to be beaten by, but the club fleet still turned out en-masse and fielded a creditable 15 home boats, and some good racing was had on both days. Our hotshots (just) failed to win the event, but to keep the DWSC flag flying proud Paul and Nick, and Graham and Theresa picked up Bronze fleet prizes. I did my own personal bit for the cause by getting lobbed from race 4 due to some black flag nonsense, and nearly managed to come last in the 6^th race too. Definitely a good weekend, and many thanks to the Miracle fleet for doing their usual fine job of running it for us.

Next up is the rest of the fleet championships, which might yet not end up on Martyn's sideboard, well we live in hope anyway. And then ho! for the Winter Series and the Winter Super Series and the Christmas party prizegiving thing (11^th of December).

Next year of course the World Championships comes to Sligo in Ireland, and the Nationals is at Mevagissey in Cornwall, so you all need to be practising like mad for the next eight months, whether or not you were actually planning to go. See you out there.