Andy Dunnett Sweeps The Board

Gunfleet Sailing Club had a busy weekend over 23 & 24 April with Saturday evening seeing a full house for the Dinner and Talk on "When Pirates Ruled The Waves".  Following pre-meal drinks the guests sat down to a splendid meal of roast pork, stuffing, crackling, three seasonal vegetables and roast potatoes, followed by apple strudel and cream, and finished off with after-dinner mints and cafetiere coffee.  The dinners then settled down to hear a fascinating illustrated talk on the offshore radio revolution off the Essex coast in the 1960's, complete with audio extracts of "the sound of the day".  

 

The next day, on Sunday afternoon, the Club held the fourth and final race in its Spring Series last Sunday – giving Andy Dunnett another win in his Laser and ensuring he took the trophy overall.

 

In a day that saw a mixture of sunshine and hail stones, plus a gusty offshore wind, it was little surprise that the competitors looked anxiously at the weather as they rigged their craft.  As the boats jostled for position, on the very top of the tide, some helms proved to be a little too eager and as the start gun echoed across the water so a second sound drew attention to the individual recall flag; highlighting that a number of boats had jumped the line.  In his haste to correct this error Rob Lockett capsized in his Laser and became parted from the craft, but it didn’t take him long to regain contact with it and get back into the thick of the action.  At this early point it was Andy Dunnett that held back the rest of the fleet as they headed up the coast on a fetch to the Kingscliff buoy.  Once round it was a broad reach out to the Seaward mark before sheeting hard in to beat in towards the shore.  Things seemed to be going well for Dunnett as he ran back out to sea on the fourth leg but at that point confusion seemed to set in, and instead of sailing close hauled down the coast to the Eastcliff buoy he decided to retrace his beat in to shore again.  Having suddenly picked-up on his error he successfully got back on track but had dropped several places in the meantime.  A little further back it was the Philpot brothers that, once again, lead the slow handicap fleet in their Topaz.  At the end of the first lap there was so little between the top three places that it was still clearly anyone’s race, but after further capsizes, and some interesting wind shifts, positions swapped, and swapped again.  Surprisingly, and very impressively, Dunnett had worked his way back up the fleet and squeezed into the top slot at the very last minute, claiming victory in the race and taking the series overall.