Shustoke L2K January News

Winter Training

With two training days completed we're looking forward to the third one on Saturday 16^th January, 09:30 to 17:00.  Our coach will be Stuart Hydon.  There is a possibility that we'll be joined by some of the club Larks.  Stuart's themes will be: sail setting, start and first beat.  There will be no charge.     

Training Day 4 is fixed for Saturday 27^th February with Nick Hollis.   Since Nick is a visiting coach we need at least 6 boats @ £25 each to cover costs.  So I'll confirm the booking with Nick if I have £150 in my wallet by close of play on 16^th January.  

Race Series

After discussion at the AGM, Kevin and Lawrence have fixed the dates (see attached) for a Laser 2000 Fleet race series.  There will be 12 races alternating Saturdays and Sundays using the mid-day club handicap race starting on Saturday 9^th January and finishing on Sunday 18^th April.  

Scoring will be the reverse of the standard Racing Rules of Sailing system.  First 2000 will score number of 2000s competing, second scores number competing minus one, etc.... then the winner of the series would be the one with the maximum score.  The effect would be to give more weight to a good result if there are more of our fleet out racing.

Lawrence is looking after the results and we'll post on the notice board and web site after each race, hopefully.

Bob Jinks is designing a suitable and extremely valuable trophy to be awarded at the end of the series.  

So don't forget - First Race at 13:00 Next Saturday (9^th Jan)

Millennium Mutterings

Those who are not members of the Laser 2000 Class Association may not have seen the latest issue of the class magazine which came out just before Christmas.  There is much food for thought about all aspects of dinghy sailing from avoiding back pain (stretch before you go afloat) to baton twirling (misuse of the tiller extension).    

This caught my eye from Chris and Jill Jordan (22116), consistently well placed throughout the Millennium Series:

"It does seem to help to have the mast raked back more in stronger winds than you would in lighter winds: it opens up the slot, allows the leach to be more vertical and the mast to bend more, so flattening the sail and reducing them power.  We sail with 6480mm from mast tip to transom.  Some people get this extra rake by moving the shrouds down by one or two holes at the shroud plate. We get the extra rake just by letting the jib halyard off and we never touch the shroud pins.

With 300 lbs of tension on the shrouds our rake is 6540mm.  In order to get to our fast rake setting of 6480mm, we let the jib halyard off until we have about 140 lbs of tension on the shrouds."

See you all (11 boats) next Saturday for the first series race, I hope.