Photos courtesy of Matt Cross – http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjcross1979/sets/72157605265007654/  

POOLE SLALOM CLUB LATEST

Roger Clark fills us in on the latest goings on:

The venue for Saturday’s racing was a difficult call due to the NE wind direction forecast – Baiter Park or Sandbanks off the front.

It was my first go at organising and the first Poole Slalom event I’ve been able to attend this year, so I wanted to call it right.

Anyway Ed got to Baiter early and reckoned it was gonna be OK there, whilst I took at look at Sandbanks and thought the same there, so it came down to where it was easiest to organise a course, so Baiter got it.

Ed on his early morning trip had managed to get hold of a buoy (big thanks goes to a the Watersports Academy for the use of their buoy) so we could lay an inside mark.  So after I had rigged a 7.2 (just right) and put in a few runs it was an easy task to wade in and position the buoy  in some nice flat water and just right for some high speed gybes close to the beach.

By 12 we counted 22 sailors ready to race – two notables being Nick Scott from Hayling and Mobbsy from the West Midlands – yes the word has spread – this number almost matched that of the first UKWA slalom event of the year so we’ve got to be doing something right with the format for just a local event.

Due to the wind direction it was pointless trying to run a big course as it often ended up it big lulls half way through the race – so we stuck to a nice simple format of two laps of a short figure of 8 course.  I lost count of how many races we completed, it must have been in double figures, but I know for one thing there were an awful lot of people in the water at the outside gybe mark – gybing a slalom board in no wind or totally over powered with nasty chop caught everybody out at some point.

I sailed until I could sail no more leaving the park at around 2 pm – Mobbsy, Fred and Andy were still at it!

Ed had to take a quick trip to hospital to stick together the cut on the back of his head, which had resulted from a collision at a gybe, which is why we’ve insisted that everyone who takes part is a member of the UKWA – we will be checking in future so bring your membership cards along.

A great session, totally exhausted and still aching on Sunday.

I notice there were a few people taking pictures/ video, so can you let me have any good stuff – we’re in the process of adding a web page to the UKWA site just for Poole Slalom.  We’d also like to promote this format nationally.

Roger