Last Sunday, the covers were finally dragged off the boats, the sails went up, and the 2024 sailing season was underway.
Prior to the first race, the wind was slightly ‘lively’, but by the time the first race started, this seemed to have blown itself out to be replaced by a good, constant, breeze, right down the Mere from the top end – almost perfect sailing conditions and, I’ve no doubt that the rest of the season will be just as good.
The racing was dominated by the Harris Family – Tom won both races by a good distance, thereby taking the lead in the Spring Series (plenty of time for someone to knock him off his perch!), whilst Mike made an early season bid for the Swimming Trophy.
Next Sunday is Easter Sunday, the forecast looks as though it will be a little milder with a decent breeze, hopefully more of you can come along and get your season going.
As advertised, between the races, we held the pre-rigging party with a cake competition.
There were seven competitors bringing along a range of cakes – fruit cake, baked cheesecake, sponges, lemon cake, shortbread and flapjacks, several of the competitors admitted that they had never made a cake before, but they all did a really good job. Tony Crosby was the ‘expert’ judge, he did a terrible job as he didn’t make me the winner, but in the end the fruit cake, baked by Isabel Blore was judged the winner with Jeremy Farrow coming second with his iced sponge with the Colemere flag on the top.
All competitions need prizes, so Nick was awarded the chefs hat to take home for Isabel, whilst Jeremy got the wooden spoon!
However, the real point of the competition was to enable everybody to eat cake, this task was approached with real enthusiasm, but at the end the cakes beat us and there was still some left for people to take home.
All in all, a great start to the season.