Dear DF Skipper,

I’ve written to you guys a couple of times over the last few months suggesting that you should enter Dragonfest and we’ve sent you a mail about what IRSA are trying to do to the RG65 class without asking the class first. Tonights mail is about the upcoming DF65 Nationals which is inbound next weekend at the fantastic Fleetwood club in the North West of the country.

The entry currently stands at 38 skippers who are coming to take in the great sea air at Fleetwood, the great Friday practice and talk by John Tushingham and the sensational racing that will take place as well as the excellent social that those canny chaps at the Fleetwood club have arranged for our pleasure.

Now the sea air, the practice, talks and racing are almost a given at this sort of event but the social can sometimes be a bit dis jointed with people staying distances away from the venue, however El Presidente, Sir Derek of Priestleyshire has organised two nights of amusement for us, just yards from the club and within spitting distance of the popular New Boston Lodge hotel, where rooms are cheap and plentiful and still available.

Friday will consist of a debrief at The Mount pub (next door to the New Boston) probably with a little bit of food for those hungry bunnies amongst us, some wine and ale and many stories of the Fleetwood club, vane sailing and radio sailing regaled by some of the sport’s elder statesmen, all of them well worth hearing.

Saturday evening will consist of the end of sailing, a super quick change and back to the Club for some more comedy team racing with the “Not the 24 hour race” where the teams will race round the pond as many times as they can in one hour. This will be followed by an excellent meal at the club, probably some wine and ale followed by a class specific quiz for everyone to enjoy before a return to The Mount for the day’s debrief and some more tales of model yachting past and present.

The racing will be great, two, perhaps three fleets, great breeze straight down the lake, trust me, it’ll be great.

So why haven’t you entered, you’ll be good enough to compete, we all got involved at some point and trust me you’ll have a ball!

Check out the details on the Fleetwood club website.

https://fleetwoodmypbc.org.uk/2016/05/04/df65-nationals/

Cheers

Tim

So we’ve just about unpacked and dried out after a great weekend of racing on both sides of the Pennines. The Fleetwood DF65 event happened on Saturday with a bit of wind but not much, some low cloud and some rain followed by some more rain then some sunshine. Lots of racing for the 16 skippers, much amusement and some frustration but overall a great day out.

The “Circus” then travelled to Weecher on’t moors above Yorkshire for a day of DF95 racing, the wind that hadn’t turned up at Fleetwood took another day off and left the 12 skippers with a light wind day of racing but a lack of rain made it more bearable and there were some decent spells of sunshine.

There are reports for both events on the Results page, both reports written by Tim’s, but only one report is a contender for race report of the year!

So a while back the Fleetwood club agreed to reschedule their DF65 meeting which was initially planned for the DragonFest weekend. They have rescheduled the event for the 11th June which is a Saturday. There are some details below to help you out with organising your day. The following weekend of the 18th and 19th was going to be a 65 & 95 weekend up at Keighley however this weekend has now been cancelled and the DF95 event will now take place at Keighley on Sunday 12th June which is the day after the DF65 event at Fleetwood. Details are available on the Events page.

Communication from Fleetwood below.

On the 11th June we have the DF65 Open meeting/Nationals warmup. Entries via contact form on the Fleetwood Website, its £3 for a days racing and to get the inside scoop on the wind, the course and tactics for the Nationals and have a race against the local hotshots, well… mostly Derek.