FOSSC: sunshine and weed

The last week or so the weather has been predominantly bright, warm and calm. Which is fine if you like gardening. Theoretically not so good if you want to sail, but I've enjoyed myself regardless. To a point.

I've been lake-bound; a couple of weekends worth of gigs mean that I don't get back to Calstar until the end of this month. Then again, I think I'd rather suffer a patient drift whilst racing on the lake than have to put up with the noise and frustration of the engine were we trying to make passage to somewhere with the Westerly in such a flat calm.

I say I've enjoyed myself to a point. The weed problem at Frampton is coming back again with a vengeance. A couple of weeks ago it was fine, but last Wednesday evening I was racing the Laser (should've been racing the Ent, but my crew had locked herself out of her car so didn't make it to the lake) and going well; about half way through I was a good leg ahead Pete and Rhonwen, my nearest competition. Then down one long reach to the green mark they caught back up.

At which point I realised I was dragging a hay bale's worth of weed along with my rudder. My bad, should've spotted it sooner.

With the rudder cleared, I shook Pete back off quick enough, but Rhonwen clung on tenaciously. I held my lead right through the last lap and around the final mark rounding, but then in the last half a dozen seconds in the beat back up to the finish line, she snuck past me.

She actually cheered and fist-pumped the air as she crossed the line first, clearly thrilled with herself. Which put a smile on my face; if there's one thing I like more than beating that really hates to be beat, it's having somebody beat me that clearly takes such delight in the win. And it's not like I hadn't made her work for it.

Of course, the humiliation of my defeat was somewhat mitigated when I beat her, and everybody else, in both races the following Sunday. More bright sun and more drifting conditions; I simply made point of obsessively clearing my foils of weed and just kept the boat moving in clean air. It paid off; for the first race, I was back ashore with a hot cup of tea in my hands before the second boat crossed the line. The second race was a little more work, but still a clear win in the end.

I have a definite advantage in the light stuff so this isn't really any credit to my sailing. The Laser is, I reckon, the perfect boat for our lake but my years racing a British Moth gave me a sympathetic feel for light airs. And I'm still supple enough in my knees at least to hold the necessarily cramped and uncomfortable positions still enough and long enough to to keep the boat properly balanced and moving when there isn't much pressure for the sails to pull her along.

This Wednesday evening just gone I was back in the Enterprise with Amanda. Another drift. We were twenty seconds late getting to the start line just for lack of air, but it didn't make much difference as there wasn't enough to get the rest of the fleet very far over it by the time we did arrive.

A combination of wind shift and thick weed caused pandemonium at what should've been the windward mark. We didn't entirely keep clear of it; almost lost Geoff and Sue in their Enterprise and let Pete in his Comet sail freely around us and break away ahead. But by the time we did struggle clear, the rest of the fleet were all still rafted up on each other around the buoy, leaving Geoff, Pete and I free to have our own chase.

We never really threatened Geoff's lead, and took too long to get clear of Pete so he eventually beat us both on corrected time with his ninja handicap, albeit only just in Geoff and Sue's case. Our own third place was still sufficient to keep us in contention for a top three finish in the overall series however, so we were content with that. Or were at least able to resign ourselves to be so.

So a good week's racing. But the state of the lake is a worry. The anglers that share the water insisted on deploying bales of barley straw in the margins again this year to control the threat of blue algae. The downside is the huge dump of nutrient from the rotting straw coupled with the clarity of the water from lake of algae and relative warmth from the lack of depth in recent years means that the weed is running an absolute riot. It's just below the surface for the moment, but within another week or two I expect we're going to see veritable islands of the stuff.

And with the water levels so low now, they're only going to drop further as the summer closes in.

A third annoyance is that the club have put a muffle into the horn we use as a starting gun following complaints about the noise from the village. Why the noise is suddenly a nuisance now after 50 years of mutual cohabitation I don't know, but the upshot is that I can't actually hear it over my tinnitus unless I'm virtually parked right on top of the committee boat when it sounds.

So I find myself after fifteen years of regularly racing at Frampton wondering whether or not it isn't time I find myself another club to race at that doesn't suffer these problems.

Which is a problematic dilemma because, funny enough, a sailing club isn't just about the sailing.

But it is a pretty necessary part of it.