Six Dragons gathered on Saturday for the first race of the season, a long town course. This, unfortunately, soon dropped to 5 boats as Beauty and the Beast, discovering they were missing the mainsail battens, returned to the mooring. Quicksilver got ahead and led the fleet to the second mark, but whether it was because the team had been missing from Burnham for over 2 years, or because no-one checked the mark number, Quicksilver performed a very neat rounding of Fairway 5 instead of Fairway 3, giving the lead to Avalanche. Avalanche held this to the end of the course, with Quicksilver finishing second and Still Crazy in third.

On Sunday morning it was the short town course in brilliant sunshine. Still Crazy got away and held a good lead for most of the race, but the patchy breeze gave the advantage to Beauty and the Beast and Avalanche just before the last rounding of Fairway 11, and they snuck through on either side. The remaining leg resulted in a final position change to give Avalanche first, Still Crazy second and Beauty and the Beast third.

Rene Nel

Picture from September 2021