The weekend of 3/4 December saw the WA RC Laser Championships commencing with sailing at Jackadder Lake in Woodvale on the Saturday afternoon – after warnings from other local RC sailors about the extent of floating weed in the lake.
Perth’s crazy weather this year seems to have produced weed at most of WA’s RC sailing venues.
The afternoon turned into a bit of a lottery with the weed – and Rod proved to be the winner closely followed by our IOM visitor Ian Sherriff sailing Fred’s boat and the consistent Dave Bedford.
It was great to see Cliff from Sydney sailing – and Scott visiting Perth from Melbourne – next time he has promised to sail !!
Rob Mews as PRO and his assistants did a great job ‘refereeing’ the continuous stream of boats coming in to remove weed and setting the courses in widely varying wind directions on the lake.
It was resolved that the main Championship races the following day would be sailed at the lake on the South Perth foreshore in the hope of reduced weed.
Sunday turned into a hot day with varying winds – and weed on the South Perth lake too !! A great fleet of nine boats turned up for the Championship and we were able to welcome new boat owner Seth and our annual (once a year) visitor Hamish. It was disappointing that five regular local WA boats didn’t race as this would have taken our fleet to 12 or 13 boats.
Dave Pruden and Seth had initial problems with electronics and missed initial heats. Graeme Howie sailing the AUS 08 demo boat was very consistent and developed a WRS (Weed Removal System) during the races which worked very well to keep his boat sailing. While Rod won the ‘lottery’ on Jackadder Lake, he lost badly on the Sunday to the dreaded weed and as the day progressed all boats found themselves stopped by weed at different times.
The racing continued and the eventual winner was Graeme sailing the demo boat with plenty of guile and experience. He was closely followed by Ian in second place and Dave Pruden in third place – only six points separated the next five boats. Dave’s performance was very good as he missed most of the initial races but sailed very well with a string of firsts later in the day. In the three State Championships held in WA, two of the three have been won by Cliff’s 10 year old demo boat !!! Actually this is more a testament to the quality and experience of Hub and Graeme sailing the boat each time … WAnderers were very appreciative of the support from RSA WA who provided an expert PRO in Rob Mews, champion canoeist in Roger, and ‘uncorruptible scorer’ in Hub Bell. We also very much appreciated the interest shown by Rosco and other IOM members and friends who came along on the day to support the event and the RC Laser class and make it a real success. Gerda also greatly assisted with keeping up the drinks and bring lunch for everyone.
14/15 April, 2012 is the date for the 2012 Australian RC Laser Championships to be held in Western Australia and we invite all RC Laser sailors from the eastern states to attend and enjoy the Perth hospitality and some great sailing.