The latest races in Manx Sailing and Cruising Club’s February dinghy series started in a cold, grey and gusty northeasterly wind at Injebreck on Sunday.

A fine fleet of 16 boats shepherded by Peter Hoosen-Owen and Kat Osbourn in the patrol boat ‘Hilary’ braved the conditions and, if they worked hard enough, were suitably rewarded.

When your correspondent left Ramsey at around 8.30am to prepare for the race, the surf was roaring in Ramsey Bay so any dinghy sailing seemed a remote prospect.

But it’s never what you expect at Injebreck so on arrival at the dinghy park at around 9am it looked manageable, if cold although with some quite strong gusts.

Hoisting the sails resulted in some increasingly loud sail flapping in the gusts and for some a concern that it could be a bit much. But once the sails are up, you just have to go and so it was.

Your correspondent’s single-handed Finn dinghy has a rather large sail area, as does the two-handed Enterprise sailed by the Whitelegg brothers Joe and Eric. Both took a surprise gust and some heavy water before the start of the first race, but the Enterprise was capsized and swamped and had to retire.

Whereas the Finn was lucky to recover just in time and could then dispose of the flooding with the self-bailers which were helped by another gust, this time handled rather better with the Finn planing away like a speedboat.

This time should have been spent assessing which end of the startline was favoured.

Most started from the slightly upwind port end but your correspondent got a good view of the fleet passing across the bow from the starboard end. It was an impressive sight watching them playing the gusts and shifts up the first beat.

First round looked like Dave Batchelor in the Laser Radial, closely followed by Ralph Kee in the full rig Laser which was to finish the race in the lead but not quite far enough in front to beat Batchelor who came in first on handicap.

Kee was second and Will Osbourn in the RS Aero 5 claimed a well-earned third place to complete the podium.

The lightweight Aeros took some serious controlling upwind and down, and tend to float away rather fast if you get spat out.

In the Finn it was more a question of having the strength to pull in the mainsheet while hanging out far enough to hold the huge rig upright, which was not effectively achieved and won’t be until correspondent gets back onto the circuit training.

The second race took place in broadly similar conditions with the exception of the late appearance of the sun which was sadly unable to warm everyone up much, but was nice to see anyway.

This time James Walker in the Streaker demonstrated how to tack on the shifts and hunt the gusts going downwind.

Tom Watterson (Aero 5) and Batchelor completed the podium to hoist themselves up the overall series ranking, while your correspondent slipped back a bit but still holds a top-10 position.

The younger sailors (Tullie Hyett, George Pearce and Jake Walker) in their Teras showed great skill and determination, completing both races, pushing as hard as they could and recovering from upsets under the watchful eyes of the patrol boat crew.

Many thanks to the patrol boat crew and to Keith Poole plus sponsor Doug Watling of Watling Streetworks.

JERRY COLMAN