A soft Southerner's perspective of Bartley

Wind was highly variable, both strength (nothing to 'not a lot') and direction, which made for some pretty tense/frustrating racing.

I spotted some cars towing 300s leaving the M5 at speed Sun morning, close to Bartley, and followed them thinking that they must have some local road knowledge. Realised the error of my ways when the convoy of 3 cars stopped along a single track road and the driver in front asked about my reversing ability with a trailer!

I reversed and escaped while the others continued down the track - I'll leave it to one of the 'Cotswold clan' to tell the rest of the story, but just mention that a couple of them were late for the start.

Greg Barton showed us how to recover from a very graceful capsize while competing with the front runners in race 1. I also capsized, but waited until I crossed the finishing line and entirely deliberately of course to cool down before lunch.

John Carron bored us all with consistently winning every race.

Andy 'the doc' Gould showed that a well sailed A rig can be competitive in light winds, but lost ground during the occasional periods of stronger wind (F2?) when sailing offwind.
Barry Steel got the merit reward for some reason that the commodore wasn't prepared to explain during the prize giving!!!?????? I had a cunning plan to join the M5 via Frankley Services for the trip home, using a bit of local knowledge, but was foiled by pass controlled bollards installed since my last visit. So I headed North to find the next junction and spent 1/2 hour driving around in circles.
(Wonder how long it took the Cotswold lads to escape Birmingham.)

Now I just need to find my way 250+ miles North to Filey...

That's my little contribution from a soft Southerner's perspective.