WATERSPORT NEWS - George Lakes Yacht Club (GLYC) hosted its annual New Year's regatta on 31 Decem-ber and 1 January.
A total of 28 boats participated from Gqeberha, Cape Town, Knysna and GLYC and, with a south-easterly wind blowing on both days, four races could be sailed on each day.
"GLYC wishes to acknowledge the contribution to the success of the event by its sponsor Lew Geffen / Sotheby's International Realty (George)," said club member Malcolm Osborne.
On Saturday the wind varied between 13 and 16 knots. Sunday saw an earlier start with initial light wind that increased to 12 to 16 knots for the subsequent races, with stronger gusts coming down Island Lake.
In all the races, the two Fireballs of David Laing & Anthony Alant, and Conrad Holm & Luke de Villiers, were able to establish big leads ahead of the fleet.
They however had to compete against each other for supremacy. Behind, the pack was led by the Finns of Brett Gething and Georgou Divaris and the Laser of Alan Keen, with the Sonnets of Tim Jones and Jordyn Soldin blowing down their necks.
With the above boats (25 in all) comprising the fast fleet, there were also three boats in a slow fleet, sailing a shorter course. These were a Mirror sailed by Joan Musto, a Tera Sport sailed by Adam Jones and a Gypsy sailed by Guy Dormehl and Gary Cundill.
With the race scoring calculated against elapsed times corrected by the Portsmouth system, the winner of the first race was Ayden Gething (Laser 4.7). Then Jones won the next two races, with Soldin the winner of race 4. In the lighter wind of race 5, the winner was Matthew de Villiers (Laser). Then Divaris pulled off two consecutive wins and Alan Keen was the winner of the final race. However, Alan was consistently in second place in all the previous races and came out ahead on total points, with Divaris in second place and Tim & Bridget Jones in third place.
In the slow fleet, the Gypsy only sailed two races on Saturday and the Mirror did not sail in the stronger wind races. This left the Tera Sport of Jones to be declared the winner of this fleet.
For more information about George Lakes Yacht Club, see its website, www.glyc.org.za or like its Facebook page, GLYC.
The GLYC New Year regatta prize-giving, with the Commodore, Dr David Laing, presiding.
The regatta fleet lining up for the start in the lighter wind on Sunday morning.
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