In Thomas Fuller’s, Gnomologia (look it up, I had to!), there appears the aphorism, “Winter comes in like a lion and out like a lamb”. This derives from farming folk lore that March begins like winter and ends like spring. It’s regrettable then that no-one told this to the wind which greeted those (fool?) hardy souls who ventured out onto a stormy Poole Harbour for the club’s Easter Series.

Two of our fellow sailors have cause to remember this regatta; circumstances that few would wish to emulate, which gave them both the questionable accolade of being the new season’s first winners of the Rasputin Cup! The crime in question was, of course, leaving the boat without permission. The first to do so was Dave Wells, which had the merit of allowing Steve Randle, an innocent bystander, to show his expertise in recovering Mike Clapp’s man overboard. Thanks to the marvel of film and You Tube, many of you will already have watched the graceful exit of Richard (aka Cecil B DeMille!) Ledger as he parted company with the tiller. As was the case in the previous incident, this also allowed one of our brethren, this time Alan Baker, to display high quality seamanship as he dealt with the carnage with which he had been left! Richard had his own heroics, dealing with the rib crew’s attempts to recover him, but I’ll leave that to him to further enlighten you. For the record, Richard Whitworth sailing with Jack Bowen were the worthy winners scoring three bullets from the three races sailed. Ian Zimmerman and Mike Barton gave them a run for their money with three 2^nd places. The final podium spot was filled by Patrick and William Keats, which means you will be able to enjoy Patrick’s account of events…..eventually!

As I write this, in practice, the Wednesday series has yet to start, since the lion that is winter has continued to roar on that day of the week! On both occasions, in the face of gusts in the region of 30kts and over, our esteemed race officer, just like Shakespeare’s character, Falstaff, decided that the better part of valour is discretion. The vast majority of us were only too pleased to see the ‘no sailing today’ signal at this early stage of the season.

Saturdays have been a bit more productive. As you will know, if you’ve read Kim’s excellent report, the first race of the season, brought some leading ffemales (sic) to the ffore(sic)! For those of you that haven’t done this, the first three boats home in the season’s opener were crewed by women, namely, Jo, Nadia, and Kim in that order. Pete and Jo have made a great start to their Saturday Spring Series campaign winning both the first two races. It doesn’t seem to matter to them whether they approach NC 2 on the run (1^st Saturday race) or on the beat (2^nd Saturday race), picking the correct way to go is no problem. With seemingly mystical powers, I think one or both of them might have been headed for the stake in the Middle Ages! I must give a shout out to Martin Cowell who has crewed for Geof on these first two Saturday races. It hasn’t taken him long to get to grips with Geof’s unique system, and their second result (2^nd place) shows the level of improvement from the first (8thplace). Of course, for the sake of journalistic balance, I should add that this might have all been down to Geof’s improved helming!

If the last race of April (Wednesday 29^th) was an example of winter leaving like a lamb, as Mr Fuller suggests it does, he must have had a pretty feisty animal in mind! Fi narrowly avoided a hat-trick of cancelled Wednesdays, making the brave decision to hold the race in very gusty conditions with a not too promising forecast of possibly increasing trickiness. If you read Wolfie’s report, you will see that she had, at least, one very satisfied customer. It was, as that author revealed, quite an eventful race. We have had a spate of ‘leaving the boat without permission’ incidents already this season. One more was added to the list when Mervyn parted company from Ron and the boat when he was trying to free the mainsheet which had caught on the transom corner after gybing. Both Ann and I thought that that only happened in Lasers (sic). Martin Cowell in the patrol rib was surprised to see just how much separation there was between the escaping helm and his Flying Fifteen. As with other incidents, it gave other people a chance to shine. In this case, it was the patrol rib in recovering Mervyn and Simon Flack whose handiwork in patching up Ron’s gashed finger was remarked upon with admiration! I can’t report how this damage to Ron occurred since he was unable to account for it – some people don’t seem to feel pain!

Well, that’s it for April. One thing I’ve learnt is that aphorisms might be pithy, but they are not always accurate. Let’s look forward to less inclement weather, and hopefully a well-attended mini-series on May 16^th as well as a cracking Paints regatta out in the bay (23^rd-25^th registration 22^nd).

JK