30 September 2003

Deneysville Aquatic Club held it's 19th Inland Keelboat Week Regatta at the Vaal Dam from 24 - 28 September with resounding success. A total of 52 entrants competed in three fleets i.e. Gold (handicap of .880 & higher - 28 entries), Silver (.879 & lower - 16 entries) and the Cruising Class (8 entries). The bulk of the entries were from Vaal dam clubs, with 5 entries from TYC. A special thanks to Richard Rath who travelled all the way up from Algoa Bay Yacht Club to compete in the event - look forward to seeing you and some of the other coastal sailors next year.

Pretty good winds over the first three and a half days allowed us to complete 9 races (8 "around the cans" and a medium distance race on Saturday) The maximum of 12 races could very well have been achieved had it not been for the (sometimes major) switches in the wind, which made life for the bridge officer and crew extremely difficult. The fact that on occasion the odd marker buoy would go "walkabout" (despite having two weights on each mark) did not help either.

Although racing was extremely competitive and at times very close (3x Stadt23's finishing the 3 ¼ hour distance race within 5 seconds of each other with the 4th only 25 seconds behind), racing incidents were kept to a minimum and only 3 protests/requests for redress, were received. I believe this is a feather in the cap for all the competitors in the event! It would appear as if NCS & Lipton Cup has definitely sharpened the L26 sailors as that class took first and third place in the gold fleet.

On shore things were just as competitive as on the water and in true Keelboat Week tradition the parties with two nights of live entertainment and two nights with a disco, lasted until the early hours of the morning. There must have been a number of "bloodless" bodies some mornings as some of the die-hards' eyes were so bloodshot that all all the blood had to have drained from their bodies to achieve the lovely maps in their eyeballs!

The only sad part of the Regatta (if you're a DAC member that is) was the fact that LDYC managed to walk off with the interclub challenge trophy, the Admiral's Cup. I must stress here that it was a dead heat on points at the end, with the last race sailed (the distance race) being used as the tiebreaker. Well, we'll just have to try harder next year!

All in all, I believe that DAC had a very successful Regatta and this is borne out by comments like "the best Keelboat Week I have attended in many years".