West Riding Sailing Club, Wakefield, Yorkshire

Members turning up last Sunday for the start of the Early Spring Series rubbed their eyes and tried to recall what they had been doing on Saturday night. Gone were the tatty old 7 racing cans, replaced by no less than 9 sparkling new buoys, colour coded in day-glow yellow or red depending upon whether they were an odd or even number.

Actually, there were only  8 marks as one had blown off its mooring during the gales in the night, but there right in front of the clubhouse was number 9!

Sadly there were more buoys than competitors!.

Was everyone exhausted after the rigours of the successful Northern Brass Monkey Series, which boasted over 20 competitors?  Or were the minds numb after the hot air of last weekend's AGM?

True the day dawned to horrendous wind conditions. But didn't you log into this fantastic website and look up the brilliant weather forecast? True iit was showing 22 mph at 9.00, but by 12 noon this was down to 18 and by 3.00 a mere 14mph. And the forecast was spot on!

Only 4 members at the most must have studied website forecast, because that's all that turned up! Disgraceful!

Dave Baxter, John Gledhill, Mike Woodhead and our keen commodore Matt Cook were the heros, and only Matt raced more than once - which means he's leading the Early Spring Series.

As for the new buoys, it was remarked early on that some idiot OOD would try and set a course that included the 50 yards leg between buoys 6 and 7, and ***** me, he did!

Don't forget to look at the weather forecast, here on this website, for next Sunday. If you don't like the look of it , come down and savour the real coffee from the new machine in the bar - there's sure to be somebody to talk sailing to.