We have had a message from Tony at Market Bosworth MYC regarding DF95 racing at the club. Details below along with a link to the very good club website.  If you are a club in the UK who have recently started sailing DF’s then please drop us a line and we’ll make sure you get a mention.

From Tony Pickering.

“I am writing to inform you that Market Bosworth MYC who sail at Stanton Lakes, Broughton Road, Stoney Stanton, Leicestershire, LE9 4JA, are sailing DragonFlite 95’s on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of every month. There is a £5.00 fee per day to sail.
Perhaps you could inform your members of this.”

Club website – click here

Hi Folks, it’s been a while. Well to be honest it has taken until now to get over the epic trip that was the DF95 Globals back in November. Wow, what a trip, it’ll take a couple of beers to tell the story but suffice to say if you weren’t there you missed out…big time.

So we are barreling towards the first two rounds of the 2019 TT series at West Lancs YC, one of our favourite venues for DF Racing. The racing kicks off on the 2nd February at the Marine Lake in Southport with DF65’s heading the bill. For entry details and a full Notice of Race please head over to the Events page, or click here.

Memories of West Lancs from 2018 – Photo Anna McKone.

It is also that time of year where we have our DF Racing AGM, you should have had an email from Wayne back in December with details of how it will go down, if you need more info on how the AGM works then please head over to the AGM 2019 page.

We have a packed 2019 calendar with two races being held abroad, one as a stand alone event and one as part of our TT series. The stand alone event is taking place the week before Easter at Lake Garda in Italy, it promises to be an amazing few days of racing in spectacular surroundings.

The other “away day” is in September in Holland. Several of us have sailed the venue before in some serious breeze and it was heaps of fun. The venue is around an hour from Rotterdam and there is an epic hotel 5 minutes from the lake, well worth the effort I reckon.

As soon as we have NoR’s for events we will get them posted up online so that you can get your sailing schedule squared away with those that matter.

We look forward to seeing skippers both old and new pondside in 2019.

Well that got quite messy in the end. The final day arrived with a good breeze from the North making sure that everyone started out in C rigs on a course at the near end of the dock.

23A kicked the day off and we soon rolled out another six races before time was finally called on the inaugural DF95 Global Championship.

The Skippers were all mentally and physically tired after six hard days of racing and it was time to let them relax at the closing dinner. The presentation was then held with each and every skipper getting a small gift.

In the end it was JT who took the win by 30 some points from Mark Golison and Peter ‘Aqua Bunny’ Allen. Mark Dicks took 4th from Swede Jonas Samson. Derek, Peter and Buzz were also counted in the top ten.

Next up for GBR was Tim in 18th spot after a tough week. Wayne came home 28th, Nigel 31st and Jim 34th.

Once over we went back to the organisers hospitality suite where another red wine fuelled evening kicked off. Buzz and Nigel wisely got off early with other Team GBR crew leaving at around 2am.

Just the journey home to sort out now which will be just as tiring.

Day 5 and the breeze looked ok, far end of the dock, A rig up, nice breeze, infernal washing machine chop and a smattering of rain to boot.

After an hour of sailing we had a lightning storm which put a stop to racing until around 1pm when we cracked on once more.

The wind died quite a bit and went well left meaning the course needed to be re laid at the near end of the dock and the light stuff meant that the chop calmed down a fair bit too. Racing ended pretty much in the dark with a B fleet race.

Debrief and dinner at Texas Land & Cattle before an early night. No real position changes, Tush still leads and is starting to look like the champion.

The final day promises a good blow from the North which should see the fleet in lower rigs and sailing in some waves.

So Day four of the DF95GC and at last we had some decent breeze which didn’t change direction or drop out all day. This gave us a great opportunity to get some proper racing in and rack up some points on the board.

B rigs all day which meant fast and fun racing for most. Winners and losers for the day were Mark Dicks who gained ten spots on the board by sailing some really consistent races. Loser of the day was Snackers who lost ten places on the board and even managed a DFL in C fleet. He drank some Tequila and felt much better about the job.

Tush still leads the racing with team GBR showing well in the top ten with Derek, Mark and Peter Baldwin all sailing really well.

Day five today and it looks like a breezy day, maybe we’ll see C rigs out on the water. It’s a long week of racing that’s for sure!

Sooooo we are at the end of day three and we are up to race 11B which is slow but steady progress.

Yesterday ended early due to a lack of breeze which meant it was early to the bar which caused some of team GBR a bit of an issue. As Ron manager had been repairing boats all day the good people were repaying his kindness with beer. This was fine until he hit the wall during last nights darts competition. Bless him!

The racing started this morning and the conditions looked challenging but manageable for the race team and the competitors.

There was a good bobble on the water which resembled putting your boat in a washing machine and tested your light wind tacking skills as well as your ability to overstand the weather mark just enough to allow for the bobble but not so much that you had skippers trying to squeeze in on port.

The racing hit its rhythm and we racked up a couple of rounds before the course needed a rethink. Once sorted we carried on and got through another couple before the wind “crapped out” on us at around 1430 during race 11B.

AP flag up and we had an hour of useful skipper led discussion about how to get an ICA off the ground and running. AP flag down, plug pulled on the day as the wind had died to absolutely nothing at all.

Team GBR took a walk across to the Bass Pro ship and had a shooting gallery competition where we found out Wayne is really quite a good shot. Good to know if ever we need anyone knocking off.

There should be more wind tomorrow but there certainly won’t be any less!

Much like the last round of our UK TT series at Eastbourne it seems that someone forgot to put the preorder in for any breeze. After the race briefing we completed just two full races today in some really tough conditions for both the race team and the skippers.

Team GBR are looking healthy enough with four skippers in the top ten.

Results posted below. More breeze promised for tomorrow.