The 2003 season is well under way, and some of you have been turning out regularly at the club racing on Wednesday evenings. Remember we have our own starts, so no excuses about Absolutly2 or Allouette taking all your wind! While there have been good turnouts on Wednesdays, the weekend regatta turnouts have been poor.

If I can encourage you to put two dates in your diaries these would be the last weekend of September (27/28) for the One design weekend at Granton. And a week later, our own Carl Dyson regatta (4/5 October). The latter is the Scottish Hunter 707 championships and there are at least 2 south coast boats thinking of coming up. Both will have class racing. If all the PE boats plus these 2 race, then there will be 15 boats out. To get class racing we will need to ensure that enough boats will turn up at other regattas.

I was asked by the association to take over being Scottish representative from Geoff, which I have done. My thanks to Geoff for all the hardwork he has done persuading new owners (self included) to join the class. It was said that this would not involve much more than I am already doing - we shall see. Seriously if there are any issues you would like raised you know who to ask. As yet I am not privy to any information that is not already available to association members on the class web site.

By choice we sail a one-design class. To ensure that there is a level field, we should all abide by the class rules. There is a summary on the association web site (http://www.hunter707.org.uk/ClassRulesSummary.html). The full rules are also available on the web site. I'll add a couple of my observations, some people are wearing buoyancy aids (better than nothing) but do you have compliant lifejackets on board for all the crew? I know it is a pain in the back (literally) but you cannot slacken off the guard rails, neither can you used extra blocks to make a multi-purchase cunningham. A marine VHF radio is mandatory - why were there so few at the coaching weekend? Did you notice that the number of flares required increased in the 2003 rules (they now match with most regatta requirements)?

Dee puts in a lot of effort to get the junior sailors out on the water in a variety of different boats. Earlier in the year she asked for help from the 707 fleet, and we agreed on Sunday 13th July. Please let me know if you can help - you only need supply a boat and skipper.

The successful coaching weekend made a surplus and as stated earlier I intend to use some of that for a 'One Design Trophy' for the club. To this end I have purchased a sculptured yacht (picture attached) with a view to mounting it on a plinth and adding an inscription. If anybody has a suitable piece of hardwood about 7 by 4 by 0.5 inches and is willing to donate it I will gratefully accept. I can cut/plane down to size.

Before the season I indicated that this trophy would be presented based on the results in the following races. (Note that these results may be different from the club results as they are level rating and not rolling handicap).

Wednesday 7th May - Wed A Series - 1st Code Z, 2nd Blue Funk, 3rd Scooter, DNF Whippersnapper, DNF Jetstream, DNF Baltika, DNF Breaking Wind.
Wednesday 11th June - Wed A Series - 1st Scooter, 2nd Code Z, 3rd Blue Funk, 4th Jetstream, 5th 64, 6th Whippersnapper, 7th Breaking Wind, OCS Baltika.

Wednesday 16th July - Wed B Series
Wednesday 13th August - Wed B Series
Wednesday 10th September - Night Series
Sat/Sun 27th/28th September - One Design Weekend (overall to count)
Sat/Sun 4th/5th October - Carl Dyson (overall result to count)
Sunday 19th October - Autumn PM Series
Sunday 9th November - Autumn PM Series

By my calculations, that give us: Code Z (3pts), Scooter (4pts), Blue Funk (5pts) and the rest of us well out of the frame. But don't give up there could be a couple of discards. One clarification, this is a closed club series, so I will drop any non-club boats from the results before assigning the points.