Abbey & Evie’s Blog – the Datchet Flyer
On December 5th we attended the Datchet Flyer, which is a part of the Seldon Sailjuice winter series. Due to the Coronavirus, they split up the two-day competition into a day for the double handers and a day for the single handers.
When we arrived, we were lucky we had Brian’s van that we could use as our personal changing rooms as Datchet was in Tier 3 meaning the only facilities they had were outside toilets.
We were lucky to have good winds of about 15 knots for the first part of the first race but then the wind dropped off slightly throughout the day. It was classic Datchet weather with some very strong gusts followed by big lulls and was very shifty. We sailed three 45-minute races during which we noticed, due to the shifts, that it was favoured to sail up the middle of the course on the beat and not favouring either side. The races were all turned around quickly leaving us to be off the water by 14:30.
We packed up and left straight away as the prize giving was later that week via Zoom. We placed 35th overall from 51 boats, with a best place of 25th in the last race. For us it was great to be back out on the water after not being able to sail during lockdown and are looking forward to being back to club sailing soon.
