Midland Areas, "Shaft"... thats a wrap..

This could have been a longer post but i'm pssed-off with work, so this is all yer gettin' - damn working spoiling my concentration!

So, its finally happened we have now had the Midland Areas...just... the forecast was promising, the breeze and weather that greeted the yachters on Sunday morning was good, but it soon decided to get all freeky on our asses and went up, down and round and round for the rest fo the day :-(

So 3 races were run, and the results were on the whole reasonable... 16 boats attended from as far away as "up tut north" and "down ol' London town" so thanks guys for supporting the event.

So with Johnny in Annes boat (not red, not wooden!) a slightly confusing day got underway...

Race 1 (Hold it now...steady)
So a fairly standard race for the most part, some big shifts kept us waiting for a little while but once we were off a good race ensued between Johnny, ourselves and Martin, with Martin to be honest (this was never gonna be a non biased web site!) being lucky to get into 2nd place up the last beat (not that we did the same to him early on in the race!)

1st Johnny & Alex
2nd Martin & Simon
3rd Ant & James

Race 2 (bumper cars & shifts)
So, more shifts, some rafts, some pretend protests that never happened and a win for Martin...

1st Martin & Simon
2nd Alan & Jes
3rd Johhny & Alex

Race 3 ("Shaft"...right on... but WHY?!)
So, there was all to play for come the last race, and the wind decided that it should pay homage to all the lottery funds passed on to sailing! After a few pretty damn major shifts the race got started and after a few further shifts, we all finished the beat (for the last time!) got round the windward mark and headed off downwind... then a funny thing happened, or I dreamt or summat.. we were around say 15 boatlengths from the mark, just got a slight overlap on Bazza (John S), when he luffed us, fair enough, seems reasonable, but then he luffed some more...and some more, and some more...and a bit more, then he put the board down,. so did we, then we had passed onto the beat (boats slowly moving passed us taking us from about 3rd/4th to about 7th, in the end, when we had headed back towards the leeward mark rather than beating (and after avoiding Martin who was now on the beat!) we were down the pan (with Barry), we still had an overlap on him and water at the mark and well..what the hell was that about, sorry I didn't make it to the committee meeting the day before but a personal on-the-water vendetta is a tad harsh.. isn't it???

So, now beaney was well ahead and un-passable, we the windshifted madly, no proper beats left on the course, we processioned around for a couple of laps then gave in.. we'd been "John S'd", righ-on and had to make do with 4th overall....

1st Martin & Si
2nd Johny & Alex
3rd Alan & Jess

So that that, Midland Areas champs were Martin & Si , well done and the top 5 results were as follows:

1st Martin & Si
2nd Johny & Alex
3rd Alan & Jess
4th Ant & James
5th Martin & Laurance

BTW, Ges was meant to be attending this wonderful event, last we heard he was coming down, aiming for the Aston Express way (Martins instructions), which you cant get to from the M6 anymore... if anyone spots Ges wandering around Brum, can they point him back north and send him on his way home...