We’ve had some info arrive with us about the winter racing at Coalhouse Fort, head over to the events page to check out the detail. Plan your DF65 and DF95 racing through until late March 2017!

DF65’s at Coalhouse Fort – Photo John Newton

With the official deadline passed for putting your entry in for the event we have made it to 31 skippers. not too shabby. If you really want to enter head over to the Lincoln MYC website and send Mick a really nice email and he might let you put a late entry in. Mick likes shiny things with the number 46 on them so perhaps a bribe of some Valentino Rossi merchandise might help your cause, or perhaps a bottle for the raffle…

There is more info on the events page and the full details can be found on the Lincoln MYC website.

A shot from Fleetwood a few weeks ago.

It seems that the latest event at Fleetwood was a success with 22 boats competing on Saturday and 14 on Sunday, more details and a report to follow soon..ish!

In the meantime here’s a photo from yesterdays DF95 event.

We have had some more information from the guys at Lincoln MYC who have now added some details to their website about the upcoming DF95 UK Nationals.

The venue is pretty cool with plenty of parking and the lake is really good and open with courses being able to be set from any wind direction. The locals are very friendly too!

Details of the event are available here

Last orders, Fleetwood, this weekend. Saturday DF65, Sunday DF95. Entry on the day for less than the cost of a pint, bring your own bar snax. That is all!

What do you do when you’ve got a free Sunday, a group of eager DF95 owners and a great piece of water to sail at? You get on the phone and organise a ‘pop-up’ open. Calls were made, boats prepared, rigs built and fourteen DF95s arrived at Keighley with the promise of a good A rig breeze for an informal days racing. Bring your own lunch, and in the form of Judith Baldwin, bring your own scorer! Having done a sterling job all day and aided by the host club’s Leo Marygold, went home with a nice bottle of white to relax into.

No need to rush about, some very smart new boats (nice stickers Gary) needing a bit of tweaking during the morning, a leisurely tea break and seven races completed before lunch. Much chat, some of it on the subject of drugs in sport, but nothing stronger than Aspirin for this fleet of finely honed athletes! Back on to the water in a slowly building breeze, top end of A rig by the middle of the afternoon, long beats, fast offwind legs, starts getting turned round faster now (sorry Tommy) to get up to sixteen races. Apart from a brief shower in the morning we managed to dodge a couple of nasty looking clouds and even came away a bit sun and wind blushed.

Results available in PDF format here – DF95 Results Keighley

To quote a line from the film Field of Dreams, “build it and they will come” – seems to work for us as well – we should do more of it, and we will, at Fleetwood for a joint DF65 & 95 weekend on September 17/18. Don’t miss it.

We’ve been contacted by the guys up at Fleetwood MYPBC who, not content with holding this years DF65 Nationals, are putting on a weekend of DF racing over the weekend of the 17th & 18th September.

The Saturday is for DF65’s and is part of the ND Summer Series, the Sunday is just for the hell of it and is for DF95’s.

There is a debrief at The Mount on Saturday evening which I’m sure will be very thorough as only Fleetwood debriefs seem to be!  The New Boston Lodge is less than a short stumble away from the pub so no excuses!

For more details clicky the poster.

Evening All, in the last few weeks we have been beavering away and getting ourselves a little more organised with a little more help.

The main change is the registrar who is now Wayne Stobbs from Portsmouth MYC. Wayne takes over from Tim Long and this change should free up Tim to do a little more website work. It should also speed up the registration process as Wayne seems to be well organised and he will be looking after the DF65, RG65 and DF95 registrations for the UK.

Wayne enjoys fishing in his spare time, it seems he’s quite good!

We are also recruiting some area race co-ordinators who can help us to promote the classes in the North, Midlands and South, we’ll keep you posted as things happen.

There will be another change coming in the next week or two which will be our web address which will become http://www.dfracinguk.com. This domain is working currently alongside the current domain and will continue to do so for some time until I remember to switch it off!

Next event that we know of is Fleetwood DF65 on the 17th September.

Last Friday saw more than a dozen DF95’s pitch up at Furzton Lake for some great racing, well, provided you hadn’t locked yourself out of your car of course…..

Geoff Raygarda has written this short report and there is a PDF results sheet too.

With an azure blue sky, unbroken sunshine, a warm, strong, tricky westerly breeze, what has Rio got that Milton keynes doesn’t?

OK we didn’t have a difficult tide to contend with or the distractions of Copacabana beach, of course, but Furzton Lake was a very pleasant place to be this afternoon.

A great turnout of nine Two Islands skippers with boats and another four or so watching or trying out boats along with five visitors made for some very exciting racing.

We started by meeting up at the Old Beams for a spot of lunch and a drink at mid day, then on to the lake for the afternoon.

Since the buoys had been re positioned for Sunday’s RG65 open to suit the predicted westerly wind, which we had today, we sailed an upwind/downwind course with two sausage laps.

Mike Stevens and John Simmonds kindly offered to man the starting lady and count them in over the finishing line, which made life so much easier.

The rescue launch had a couple of outings when one boat landed on the island and another hooked a buoy rope but apart from a couple of contacts and turns there were no major incidents and everybody did their turns without any asking.

The wind certainly proved challenging, being just between A and B rigs, with a few competitors changing rigs but eventually most of the fleet settled on being slightly overpowered at times on the bigger rig. True to form for Two Islands  the wind had more twists than politician and holes than a Swiss cheese, which made for a few exasperated expressions.

John Tushingham brought prototype number 2, the aptly named ” The Darkside”, with it’s all black hull and black sails, which he lent to Mike Clifton who was always at or near the front to finish second overall, just behind John Tushingham., not far behind was Wayne Stobbs, myself and Keith Coxon.

Keith Bell was struggling with a sail winch that would not hold it’s position, which hampered him no end so he was not able to challenge up at the front.

I have to confess to not being quite sure what was going on in the fleet as I was concentrating so hard on keeping the boat going in a straight line without taking anybody out,

There were a fair few retirements and early baths, possibly due in part to the wind strength but most skippers seemed to manage the conditions well with some very exciting hair raising down wind runs and only the very occasional nose dive.

All in all a fun day with great company, thanks in no small part to those who had travelled a day early for tomorrows RG65 open, to make today such a great success.

Geoff Raygada

Results sheet, guess who got locked out of his car……answers on a postcard please! dragonflite regatta 12th Aug 16 Race Sheet

The following day, Saturday, saw Round 6 of the RG65 travellers series where 22 RG’s and DF’s lined up to race in one fleet, there is a report on the RG65 website

Sue Brown was on hand with her photographic skills once again and you can check out her photos here.