Manx Sailing and Cruising Club’s Watling Streetworks February series continued at Injebreck on Sunday.

Another forecast of 8-10 knots maybe gusting 11 or 12 west with sunshine was not enough to deter some of the regulars from hopping off the island to go sliding down mountains on planks.

But the fleet of 10 boats who stuck with it were rewarded with a pretty balmy morning (after the drizzle had stopped) with the temperature heading for 13 or 14C in the sun. Not bad for mid-February.

The breeze couldn’t decide which way to blow over the lake but set mainly from the south at the southern end, west in the middle and north at the top, with areas of not much at all around the start line.

This made course-setting a bit of a challenge for the keen-eyed officer of the day Keith Poole who looks at the angles boats are sailing at before setting everyone off on a course with hopefully a beat, a run and some reaching and - if at all possible - a bit of wind to make it all happen.

The course for the first race had sailors heading up the lake, leaving the start mark to starboard then leaving mark five up north to port, mark one down south of the start line to port then back over the startline, leaving that mark to starboard again.

This course could have been done by simply sailing around the start mark but nobody tried that one, although competitors had some doubts about where number five was (the marks sometimes seem to move about a bit) and which way to go round it.

Once all that had been settled and the wind patterns sorted the fleet split with the faster boats slipping away but, when there’s no wind, no-one goes anywhere and the slower boats effectively catch up because of the time handicap system.

So, although Teddy Dunn in the RS Aero 7 finished in front of the fleet, it was Jim Whitelegg in the Gull who was just that little bit too close to the leaders and so took the bullet by 16 seconds from Dunn who was a further few seconds ahead of Andrew Dean in the Laser Radial and Colman in the Finn.

The OOD went for the southern option for the second race which still had a beat to mark one, then there was a reach across the lake, a run down to mark four and then a beat back to the start, all marks to port.

A big gust had the front boats planing up the lake for a minute or so but then it was back to shifts and cat’s paws. Dunn made no mistakes here and took the honours but Jim Whitelegg held second on corrected time well in front of sons Joe and Eric in the Enterprise.

Full results are on the club website https://www.msandcc.org and some great pics of the fleet taken by Andy Dunn (not all of son Teddy) from the patrol boat.

It was good to see the Ard Whallian Topper Omega out with Bob Love and Martin Jackson – hopefully that one will be fully up and running this season - and commiserations to George Pearce who fell into big wind holes in both races. Sometimes sailing is like that.

The series is wide open with Dean leading on 28 points, Tom Watterson second in the RS Aero 5 on 30 and Simon Cain third in the RS Aero 7 on 37. It could all depend on the last race next weekend.

Thanks go to the patrol boat crew Graham Wilson and Huw Bevan, race officer Keith Poole and sponsor Watling Streetworks.