report by Peter Shepherd pictures by Peter Jackson & Kevin Newman
After a brief conversation at this years Mad March Hare with a couple of Footy curious Cheddar Steam Club members and ourselves we hatched a plan to attend their club and hold a Footy Day where some of us who are longer in the tooth than others could pass along some of our experience to their skippers.
We arrived mid morning to a very warm welcome from the assembled members, after the introductions were all completed we ran a short lecture on the model yacht racing with Footy class yachts which touched upon everything from how it should fit in the box, the basic rules of racing to course setting skills. This took up most of the morning and was generally well received by the Cheddar members, being not to involved and with lots of questions and answers along the way.
At the end the three visiting skippers Peter Shepherd, Peter Jackson & Geoff Raygada took the time to answer questions from individual skippers with much interest being shown in the construction of our soft material swing rig sails.
After a most excellent lunch provided by the club and copious amounts of tea or coffee also gratefully received, the atrocious weather of the morning gradually the cleared and unfortunately so the wind died. Consequently our planned racing event for the afternoon was severely affected however we were able to let everyone who wanted to have a go with our yachts and see the performance of the club yachts.
Amongst the yachts Cheddar members have produced there is an abundance of beautifully finished well built models, it was most gratifying to see so many from the pages of Sail Footy UK, with Awk, Opalek and Ranger models all being featured and all performing very well. If they go away with anything from the day it will be the need to have a wider range of sails to cover most wind conditions our Fat Boys rigged with Justin sails still able to sail in the extremely light conditions on the day.
It was a most enjoyable day out for us and from the thanks that we have received worthwhile for the Cheddar Steam Club members also.
We thought that you pitched the morning talk at the right level for our members. Everyone that attended enjoyed the day without exception.I even overheard one member saying that it was the best day that he had had for a very long time.