The fleet of 10 dinghies on West Baldwin reservoir was treated to an early taste of spring in Sunday’s round of the Watling Streetworks Winter Series.

Manx Sailing and Cruising Club members faced a moderate and almost warm southerly breeze, quite a contrast to the previous round when there was a northerly blast with slivers of ice around the boats.

The start line works well with a southerly so that everyone on the line at the gun has a good shot at winning clear air up the first beat to the number one mark. Employing the ’trigger’ technique accelerates the boat and Ffinlo Wright (Aero 9) got it exactly right at the first start and was never headed thereafter.

The breeze was a little stiffer nearer the left-hand end of the line and those starting towards the pin gained over those who started nearer the west bank. The header encountered a little way in begged the question - how far into the header to sail before you tack?

A little way further than first knock meant you could cross the fleet on port tack as they all approached on starboard. There were a few shouts nonetheless - a lot of thinking to do so early on a Sunday morning, as well as the effort required to wrestle the boats upwind through the gusts, lulls and shifts.

Clean tacks and sharp mark roundings were the order of the day, with every boat length gained a little victory and every one lost very hard to recover.

Some of your correspondent’s mark manoeuvres in the Finn were a little too relaxed, resulting in Teddy Dunn (Aero 5) shooting through on the inside and grabbing a few metres which I was fortunate to recover up the next beat.

He will be hard to beat sailing like that and, despite the lead held by Wright on the water at the finish, he took race one by 14 seconds from Wright with Dave Batchelor (Aero 7) a further minute behind.

The MS&CC Lasers and Finn (Simon Pressly, Ralph Kee and James Allison, with Jerry Colman in the Finn) all finished within the next minute on corrected time so pretty close racing.

It was nice to see Keith Holden (LSC) back racing again in his beautiful Finn, finishing less than another minute behind the MS&CC bunch.

The RS Teras of Ivan Nicholls and Levi Baugh completed the leaderboard, finishing their own private and quite noisy battle around the course with the former a little way in front.

Race two ran over the same course in similar conditions. This time Colman made it to the windward mark first thanks to a couple of lucky shifts, but was unable to hold Wright off on the long downwind leg to the top of the lake.

There was a nasty shock for your correspondent when Allison (Laser standard) tacked on top of him, threatening to take his wind. But the Finn had a little more momentum and the crew was able to squeeze him away, disturbing the airflow over his sail using the lee bow technique, forcing him to tack away hopefully into oblivion.

The finishing order looked good, with only Wright in front but the rest did look a bit close behind and so they were.

Teddy took the race again by 11 seconds from Allison who had dug back out of oblivion to slip in seven seconds in front of yours truly who was only four seconds in front of Batchelor. He finished another four seconds ahead of Wright, all on corrected time.

Pressly and Kee, generally nearer the top of the ratings, were within one minute ahead of Holden and the lads in the Teras a little way back. Ivan took the Tera honours again but by only three seconds from Levi so a marked improvement by the latter.

Before signing off, I have to sadly mark the passing of Ed Whipp, a fine local sailor, friend and frequent crew on my boat Sea-Pie of Cultra. Sincere condolences to Jane who also sailed with us and to mum Barbara and the rest of the family.

Many thanks to Keith Poole for race officer duties ably assisted by Phil Hardisty, patrol boat crew of Helen Kee, James Nicholls and Andy Dunn and sponsor Doug Watling.

Some photos and the full results are on the club website. They were remarkably close again despite the variations in the wind etc.

JERRY COLMAN