Sunday morning brought warm, sunny weather and NW winds of 8 to 10 knots with long gusts to about 15. With the offshore winds came the normal oscillations. As you can see from the photo above, our fine RC had the line about as square as is possible in oscillating breezes.

After a fine - if fairly uncontested - RC boat end start, Al tacked away since the oscillation favouring port tack had come, but those who held on through the first knock (see photo above) gained dramatically in the left corner. John Cawthorne and Roger Shepherd were among the leaders around the first mark, and I seem to recall Heider rounding 3rd with Al not too far behind in about 6th, just inside Peter Ayres.
Knowing and following the course to the next mark again paid off handsomely for Al and Frank who let the boats ahead sail well high while they picked their way through to leeward into 2nd place at the gybe mark. The second reach saw Al remain about 50 m. behind John as the former had to fight off repeated windward challenges from the speedy Roger Shepherd in  invasionmicro.com. Heider, meanwhile, was in a bunch at the gybe mark and had his hands full trying to hold 4th.
On the 2nd beat, Al tried to sail a combination of shift playing, and staying between the main competition (Heider) and the next mark. Covering Heider well out to the left side ended up giving Al a nice port-tack lift on his way in to the mark that moved him past John and into the lead.
Starting the run a fairly close second, John virtually killed any chance of a comeback as he held starboard onto the run for some time in a dying breeze that was nicely angled for a port tack broad reach. In fact, Roger took this opportunity to snatch 2nd from John. While Al cruised to victory, Heider could manage no better than 4th, and the SHADES team now had a stranglehold on the series.
Another good, solid race for Hans Gottschling who edged out Bill Fyfe for 5th while Ivan Pedersen had his best race of the series so far, with a 7th.

Winds now backed into the WNW and down to about 6 knots but still with gusts to 15+. Later in the race, the winds came up to a fairly steady 10 to 12 knots. By now it seemed clear from the two race #4 beats and the back in the wind, that the left side would be favoured.
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While John Cawthorne (3654) and Bill Fyfe (937) (above) started at the suddenly and briefly unfavoured pin end, Al remained conservative with a mid-line start of which he moved well. When the three main threats - Heider, John and Roger - all tacked away, they crossed behind Al who tacked to loosely cover. By defending the left side against these three, Al was able to round a comfortable 2nd behind Bill Fyfe and Mike Codd who had made out like the proverbial bandits by hitting the left corner.
SHADES made some gains on the two reaches and the ensuing beat while maintaining a loose cover on Heider, John and Roger. A couple of times up the second beat, it appeared that Al would be able to cross Bill but in the end, Bill and Mike sailed brilliantly to round onto...

Greed reared its ugly head when Al rounded onto the short final beat a mere 2 lengths behind Bill and Mike: Al got into a tacking duel with Bill instead of doing what he should have done which was to protect 2nd against Heider, Roger and John. In the end, Al could not catch Bill and Mike who completed a richly deserved first. In addition, Al nearly lost 2nd to Heider whom he had failed to cover.
In what was by now a battle over series 3rd, John Cawthorne kept his hopes alive by beating Roger Shepherd and moving to within one point of the Shepherd/Kumpf duo in the overall standings. One of the best big regatta races ever for the team of Kit Wallace and Marcel Plug as they took a quiet 6th that seems to have escaped the photographer's eye! And kudos to Peter Ayres and Lou Scaglione who completed a fine race in 7th!

The wind reverted to NW about 6 knots with gust cells to 12. This kept alive the streak for Lord Weakley who had to change the course and its marks for all 6 races, and in this case the RC chose a windward/leeward course for this one. Aboard SHADES, we were guessing that this would be the final race and decided we had earned the right to sail our own race, with only marginal worry about the positioning of the competition. Since the day had repeatedly demonstrated that the left side of the beats was paying off, our provisional game plan was to go left with only short tacks to port if we needed to clear our air. Oddly enough, others seemed to have the same idea and were crowding the pin end which the current oscillation favoured. So we decided to start in mid-line until a late return oscillation made the boat end quite attractive and we got a nice, relatively uncrowded start there. In the end, it was Al and John who stuck to their guns and went far left and who rounded a comfortable 1-2 off the first beat.
Catching one of the less and less frequent gusts around the windward mark, Frank and Al took off nicely while poor John and David got there just too late and virtually sat and then had to worry about pursuers that were closing in. Starting beat #2, we all hit a large soft spot. A liberal easing of the sheets and jib halyard kept SHADES chomping through the chop nicely while the pinching pursuers seemed to stall out a lot more. Standing up in the boat, we could see wind coming from in front and from the right. A decision needed to be made and finally decided that the left (again!) looked more promising. And it was! With lots of nice hiking puffs and oscillations to shorten the distance that needed to be sailed, SHADES threaded her way into a big lead going onto the run, a lead which we held to the finish.

Meanwhile, an interesting battle was shaping up over 2nd place as John arrived at the leeward mark just ahead of Ivan and Chris Pedersen who were bow to bow with Heider and holding the inside buoy room position the last time we looked. Going left again paid off for John and Heider with the latter snatching an amazing second place by an eyelash over John who had seemed to have Heider well covered until right at the finish line. Ivan and Chris fell to 4th in all this, having gone more up the middle, but still ended up with perhaps their best big regatta result ever! Well done, Ivan and Chris!!
Hans Gottschling scored yet another 5th (on his way to series 5th, oddly enough!) as he beat out Paul Taylor and Roger Shepherd - no mean feat!!
A special note of sympathy about 14th place where Kit Wallace and Marcel Plug could be seen about a leg behind the fleet, romping along with a spinnaker that had a very fashionable glistening and wet look which looked great but suggested an early-race capsize to the trained human eye which I am equipped with (as someone funny once said).