Manx Sailing and Cruising Club’s Watling Streetworks Winter Series got underway at Injebreck on Sunday.

A forecast of light southerlies increasing rapidly to strong, gusty south-easterlies with heavy rain was not the ideal prelude to the first two races of the December series (after no wind the previous weekend), but a hardy fleet of 10 dinghies started rigging operations in the moderate conditions before the 10am start.

In tune with the forecast, as the start approached, some sharp gusts from the east began to challenge the fleet during and after launching, and the patrol boat skilfully handled by May Shiu Chan and Chris Cope began to get some trade.

Junior sailors Tom Watterson and Will Osborne, sailing their twitchy RS Aero 5s, had a few spills (including some spectacular downwind cartwheels) but recovered without outside assistance to finish both races in increasingly hairy conditions.

Some of the more senior competitors were also pushed to the limit and in some cases beyond on the windward/leeward (upwind/downwind) courses set by the race officer Keith Poole.

Gear failures resulted in a couple of retirements and near exhaustion slowed some of the more experienced combatants who found they couldn’t pull in or let go of the mainsheet powerfully or quickly enough.

But most still made it round – naming no names, the age range was close to 60 years or maybe a bit more.

A good choice of boat for the conditions was the Laser Radial but one would not expect one of these to spend both races at or near the front of a fleet of mostly theoretically much faster dinghies.

But this was what Simon Pressly achieved and it landed him with two bullets. Dave Batchelor’s Hadron H2, unbeaten in the November series, made a second and a third to run in second overall.

Watterson did really well to take a second and fourth to lie in third overall despite a few spectacular capsizes.

Stu Brew (D-Zero) and Jerry Colman (Finn) on nine points came in joint fourth with only a few seconds between them on corrected time and Andrew Dean (D-Zero) close behind on 11.

Simon Cain and Will Osborn in RS Aeros (which love to spit you out in these sorts of conditions) brought up the rear but congratulations to anyone who ventured out onto the lake on a day like this.

A note on how helpful all the competitors were retrieving all the boats as their exhausted helms sailed up to the dinghy park and then by pulling the patrol boat ashore.

Sailing can be highly competitive and both physically and mentally challenging, but sailors young and old do help each other and enjoy each other’s company (except while racing of course).

Thanks to sponsor Watling Streetworks, OOD Keith Poole for the usual excellent race management and patrol boat crew Chris Cope and May Shiu Chan for looking after everyone and towing broken boats back home.

Full results and photos can be found on Manx Sailing and Cruising Club’s Facebook page.