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.

Lots of walking under sunny skies for the 92 races over 5 days. Photo – Sue Brown

So we’ve just about recovered now and have unpacked, washed boats down and settled back into the daily grind of life however as a reminder of what we did last week there is a report on the full DragonFest week of events on the results page. Well worth a read, even if just for the social reports. There are also links to the superb photos taken by Sue Brown. Take a look at the results page here

We are just a few days away from the start of DragonFest 2016, the first half of the week will be given over to some informal DF65 racing with some DF95 racing and demos on Friday with DragonFest proper starting at 0930 ish on Saturday morning.

There are some amazing prizes on offer with a DF95 for the winner and a DF65 for the other two podium finishers plus another amazing spot prize for someone which will be decided by the DF committee.

If you plan to enter any part of the event please please please use the online form at www.dragonfest2016.com  which will allow West Lancs YC to get some bearing on numbers for food over the event. You can still enter the event right up until registration on Saturday morning, we will be processing entries through the week after the racing so even if you are thinking about a late entry we can make it happen for you!

Entry fees will be collected at registration on Saturday morning and includes lunch for both days and a Prizegiving buffet as well as a top quality DF65 related goody!

If you are around on the Friday for the DF95 racing you can either pitch up with your own boat or come along and use one of the available demo boats, there will be plenty of informal racing taking place along with some amusing banter and a good bit of social afterwards.

Whilst the sailing over the week will be pretty epic it is fair to say that the social aspect of the event is just as important, I’ve dusted off my BBQ and sorted out the awning for the van and will probably be equipped with a fridge to keep my beer nicely chilled so it would be advisable to bring a chair along so that you’ve got a perch for a drink apres sailing.

There is a great car park above the venue where, if the wind is right we might have a spot of land yacht racing one evening, if you’ve got one, bring it along, it’ll be a giggle.

The club will be open from 2pm on Tuesday 10th onwards and we’ll see you there!

Cheers

The DF Crew

Those chaps down at Coalhouse Fort are holding a DF65 race day in aid of the Air Ambulance. Details are on the poster below, click to view a larger version.

A great weekend just gone with events in the North taking centre stage, Saturday saw the RG & DF circus roll into Birkenhead for a day of great racing.  Brad Gibson took the honours in the RG fleet with Tim Long taking the DF result and 8th overall from the 25 boats entered. Check out the Birkenhead website here for a more detailed report.

Sunday saw the first of the DF Northern Summer Series at Balne Moor at Askern. Some testing conditions saw a great fleet of DF skippers taking to the water for a testing days racing. A full report is available on the Results page. John Tush took the honours after a superb comeback from a off form morning.

There will be some news about Dragonfest very soon, the event hasn’t received the entries we had hoped so we are rejigging the event into two with the two day weekend sailing being Dragonfest proper. More details as we get them.

As a consequence of this the planned event at Fleetwood for the same weekend  has been cancelled and rescheduled for the 11th June, just a month before the Nationals at the same venue.

We have had a few bits of events news come through with details of the ND summer series, more info on the Events page.

Don’t forget the events at Birkenhead and Askern on the 16th & 17th April, details on the Events page.

We have some more events news posted up on the events page including details of the 2016 Nationals at Fleetwood.  The venue is legendary and can provide some world class conditions. The social is also pretty legendary too with Uncle Derek’s après dinner quiz sure to provide much entertainment. Well worth the trip North for you Southern types! Check out the events page here

There are also details of an event at Fleetwood during May which will be of interest to those not attending Dragonfest.

With no other club activities planned for Easter Good Friday, Ripon Sailing Club’s Dragonforce 65 owners decided that it would be an ideal opportunity to organise some racing for this popular class of radio controlled model yachts. Plans were made, DF65 owners from other local clubs were invited and the weather forecast was kept under close observation.
What an inspired choice of date it turned out to be, with sunshine and a mainly 12 to 14mph breeze all day long. Not typical Bank Holiday weather at all. Six RSC helms were joined by 15 visitors from other Clubs and a full programme of 12 races was held. Sailing conditions by the Clubhouse, where the course was laid, were not always straightforward. Regular shifts and a few squalls and holes in the wind provided variety along with some quite unpredictable headers that regularly confused those trying to judge the layline into the windward mark.
No fewer than six different helms won at least one race each and though the eventual top three overall had the more consistent string of results, all of them had a number of races that did not go entirely to plan. An oscillating wind meant that the port end of the start line was favoured, but it did get very crowded at times! Much depended on keeping out of trouble at the start and sticking to the left side of the beat in the expectation of getting a port tack lift to the mark. Some learned this lesson sooner than others while some never did learn it, and it showed in the results.
The course was re-laid during the afternoon to take account of a changing wind direction, resulting in the need to re-assess the best way around. Again some latched on to this more quickly than others, proving that there’s no substitute for experience and that time on the water holds just as much value for model yachters and it does for those who sail bigger boats.
The event came to a close with prizes for the top five and spot prizes for others throughout the fleet.

Full results available here – Results