News | Knysna Yacht Club

Inshore Sailing – Dinghy News
Joop Weddepohl
The Mid-Summer Splash, those Wednesday late afternoon races, now mainly for the youngsters, has come to an end. Of the 17 Wednesdays planned, only 8 were actually sailed owing to either the weather conditions or the lack of entries. The overall winner is Kyran Bosazza on 52 points with Luke Bosazza and Jason Cooke joint second on 45. Justin Stoker is fourth on 44 points.
There is one point for starting and one point for every boat beaten.

If one compares this year’s result with last year’s, when 12 out of 14 Wednesdays were sailed, and Dudley won with 143 points, it is clear how much this series has gone down in popularity. Sad, but there it is. As a result, for the coming season, we thought of combining these Wednesday races with the Friday races for the small keelboats, but then it was pointed out that the kids need their Friday to joll or something like that and would prefer to keep this racing on a Wednesday, even though they always are late! So, for next season, we will have Wednesday racing only every other Wednesday on a high tide. Hopefully this will encourage the seniors to enter this series once more. Eight Wednesdays are planned from mid-November till mid-March. And it will be raced for the Mathiessen Cup.

Then last month we had those two Weta trimarans on loan from Smart Yachting. They caused a lot of interest and we had quite a few sailors going for a trial sail. Most of our juniors were taken for a ride as well. Speed-wise we were a bit optimistic by estimating them to be somewhere between a Hobie 14 and a Hobie 16. They turned out to be a little slower than the Hobie 14, but at about the same speed of a Spearhead, they still are pretty impressive! The name “Weta” appears to be well chosen as you do get kind of weta on those boats in a blow!

We also sailed the fourth race for the Founders Trophy with a disappointing five entries. That series is now finished with Jacek in first place on 20 points, Dudley second on 27, and Colin Mathiessen third on 30. In the Hobies Duncan Simpson won on 13 points with Pat Tarboton second. There were no junior entries for this Cup.

Two races have been sailed so far for the Commodore’s Cup, with two more to go. The first one had nine entries, but the second only three, probably because it blew up too much and it was a long weekend.

And, in that same long weekend, KYC had a rep at the 505 Nationals at Sterkfontein Dam just outside Harrysmith. Dudley went there with his boat and had Stephan Kuhn as crew. They were sponsored with a much needed new set of sails by FLUID Yachts, a division of Custom Marine of Knysna, the same people who also sponsored our new notice boards. There were 16 entries with the top 505 teams preparing for the Worlds in Denmark later this year. The first race was a blow out with a storm of over 40 knots. Only four boats finished and there were two broken masts, two shredded mains and three shredded jibs. Saturday had light winds and three races were sailed with some very close and exciting racing. On the Monday the boats were on the water at 08h30 in winds of some 18 knots. Six races were sailed with no more than 10 minutes in between and Dudley said it felt like one big marathon. In one race KYC had a terrible start and they tacked away to try for clear air. They decided to carry on whilst the rest of the fleet carried on their tack, and when the KYC team decided to tack to get to the rest of the fleet they hit a huge lift which took them over the entire fleet and got them round the weather mark first. A few boats managed to get past them on the run, but they ended that race in fourth position. The sailing was awesome and KYC ended in fifth position overall. Well done Dudley and Stephan! If it wasn’t for the new sails, Dudley said, we wouldn’t have been competitive, and it is great that a local yacht building company like Fluid Yachts put something back into sailing. This is the start of a campaign towards the 505 Worlds in Port Elizabeth in 2012 in which Dudley and David Shilton plan to race together.

Check out www.FLUIDYachts.com And, closer to home, end March we have the Michaelides Endurance race, and then in April two more Commodore’s and the last of the Fastnet races and that is that for this season.
The Closing Cruise is on Saturday 1st May.