A lone D-Zero made the journey to Yorkshire Dales for the 2016 Brass Monkey. With others left ruing leaving their entry too late.

Nigel Austin made the most of his day up north and did a great job of staying away from Tim Olin. He reports as follows:

A 3.5hr drive early on the morning of an event is perhaps not the best preparation, and when the fog descended at the briefing it looked like the 100 odd boats that had entered might have an equally long time waiting for the start. However no sooner than everyone had rigged than the pea souper lifted and a consistent (ish) Force 2 (occasionally 3) filled in. Unfortunately I was in the B fleet together with the RS200’s, Enterprises and GPs whilst the A Fleet had the Aeros and other single handlers and so whilst it’s no excuse, I never seemed to be able to pull away enough up wind before the long downwind legs when the spinnaker bellowing boats blotted out what little wind was out there. I soon came to the conclusion that I wasn’t doing that bad but neither was I doing that good, and in fact after the 2 races I did end up as halfway through the fleet at 52 out of 102 entries. It is a strange thing racing on your own in a large handicap fleet, but I had had some practice in the Comet at Bloody Mary a few times. I still have a lot to learn in terms of getting the most out of the DZero but losing a stone and a half might help in 2017!.

Yorkshire Dales SC is so well organised and welcoming and the civilised one race then a choice of 5 top lunches then another race with a glass of mulled wine when pulling the boat out of the water is difficult to surpass. I am sure I will be back to tame the brown waters!

Of to Grafham where up against 21 DZeros will be completely different!!

From here we move on to Grafham for the Grand Prix on the 2nd January where a great turnout of 21 D-Zeros (20 grey and 1 blue) will see the fleet be the largest class based on pre-entries of the 184 strong contingent.