A lively easterly wind, blowing down the Welsh Harp towards the dam gave a taxing windward leg to West Hendon and a splendid spinnaker run from Staples Corner to Club in Wembley SC's Midweek Series on Wednesday.
Colin Brockbank and Martin Hughes' "Philosophical Salmon" led the Merlin fleet from the start to win easily from Mark Candelas' "Smooth Operator" which had the benefit of Geoff O'Neill as crew, both missing their normal partners.
Bobi Barkanay and Mike Shaw, who slipped so disastrously from second to tenth the previous week, reversed the process by coming up from a poor start to finish third in "Newark Eel".
Breaking the halliard while hoisting the mainsail, Paul Beard and Jo Wells quickly moved to crew for two rivals who, had been planning to sail singlehanded as Wembley SC Firefly Fleet rules allow.
Jo helped Steve Sargeant to come second behind David Evans and Karen Garlick but Paul couldn't quite get William Gibbons to beat John and Andrew Wilcock for third place.
Frank Pearce and Dave Moroni continued their successful run in the GP14 series by winning again from John Shepherd and Bernie Loughnan, with Stan Marks and Chris Hall third.
Robert Janering won the Laser race from Joe Farwell. Finding the gusty winds hard work for sexagenerian muscles, Roger Whitney, who has been racing on the Welsh Harp since before the rest of the Laser fleet were born, had to settle for third place.
Sunday morning's race in Wembley's Summer Series had a westerly wind blowing up the Welsh Harp, enabling Merlins to plane under their colourful spinnakers from Neasden to West Hendon. Leslie Ross and Tony Wakelin made their usual well-timed starts in both races, but had a hard job to keep "Steppenwolf" ahead of Maurice Cleal and Tim Unneman's "Seveneye".
Particularly in the first race, the wind was bouncing off not only the trees on the North shore, but the more recent willows on the far side, so the shifts became almost impossible to predict.
As the first class to start, the Merlin leader is the pathfinder whose mistakes others can see and take a different route.
However, Ross has not been a national champion twice for nothing and covered Cleal on the final upwind pegs, keeping between his rival and the wind to win both races.
Mark Candelas, with a new Wembley member crewing "Smooth Operator", took advantage of some rogue windshifts to snatch third place from David and Barbara Bland's "Grand Cru", who did the same to finish third in the midday race.
The different standards of the Merlin and GP14 fleets was shown when Keith Watson and Sam Waddoups decided not to risk a capsize by flying spinnaker but still won from Brian Jefferies and Richard Malden and Stan Marks and Milton McIntosh, whereas any Merlin not setting spinnaker would have come last.
The steadier midday wind encouraged more GP14s to set spinnakers, but the 'W' team won again, this time from Andrew Thomas and Anka Huber, with Gary Stewart and Fanny Mitchell third. They must do better this weekend, when GP helmsmen from all over the country arrive for the GP14 Masters' Championships for those at least 40 years old.
The Lasers found the windward legs hard work without a crew to share the sitting-out, Julian Bradley led for the first two laps, but was caught on the last by Steve Janering.
James Dodsworth won the midday race from Francis Bucknallm who, having finished third in the morning, was the only Laser helmsman to finish in the first three in both races. Robert Janering was third.
Paul Beard and Jo Wells, clearly the best Firefly duo on the Harp, won both races from David Evans and James Anderson, with Douglas Maxwell third.
Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article