Having spent the best part of 7.5 hours in the van on Friday making my way to Dartmoor RSC it was a pleasant surprise to be greeted by Ken Binks and Nigel Brown at the lakeside along with several of the DRSC members who had pitched up to ready the water for the DF Racing UK weekend.

Despite the horizontal rain and low cloud myself, Nigel and Ken put boats on the water and had a bit of a tune up before the rain and wind really arrived and we abandoned to a local pub for the evening.

Saturdays forecast was suitably poor, with very little breeze forecast to come from many directions along with bucket loads of rain too.

Twenty two skippers, a good mix of locals and travellers, braved the conditions which, at first, didn’t look too terrible and the two seeding races were held to determine the two fleets in not too much rain and a reasonable bit of breeze. If you had one, an A plus rig was the thing to have today, the first time it has been utilised in competition properly here in the UK and well worth the investment.

An A plus rig – very handy today!

Nigel Brown won his seeding with Liz Tush winning hers whilst husband John could only manage a third place finish in his seeding.

Nigel went on to win the next two races before another winner, Ken Binks, was to take the top step of the podium. Race 5 saw John Tush take his first win of the day after a slow start and 6, 7 and 8 also went Tushy’s way which we put down to a good lunch.

After a couple of thirds and some discards it seems that a  good lunch had also done the well travelled Tim Long the world of good and he posted some good results, including a win in race 9, during the afternoon session.

With the wind fading and Tushy taking race 10 it was decided that the skippers and race team had had enough and once again the rain had set in.

With ten races completed with the two fleets it was Tushy who took the win from Nigel by 2 points, Tim was 6 points adrift of Nigel in third and Ken was just three behind Tim. There was a reasonable gap back to the next group of Wayne Stobbs, Liz Tush, Dave Kent and James Scrimshaw.

The top six DF65 skippers

Much good racing was had by all, the race team did a grand job in challenging circumstances and the skippers were very well behaved at this great venue.

Tomorrow sees the DF95 fleet take to the water when we are perhaps promised some wind and even a little sunshine.

Results