A light and bright day greeted the competitors on 30th Nov at Oxford for the last of this years open meetings.

Despite the entry of just 10 boats the caliber was very high and consisted of a 50% mix of both able bodied and dis-abled, something unique and rather special to the 2.4mtrs. Racing was close throughout the fleet and very entertaining for the competent race team.

Race 1 saw the two new Stradivarius designs of Martin Wittingham Jones and Bruce Hill perfectly suited to the conditions creating a commanding lead over the rest of the fleet followed by Jonathon Currell, showing a worrying expectation of future success. However, with the wind dying in race 2, Megan Pascoe, repairing her boat after light gear problems soon leveled the competition. We thought she would dominate as usual, but could only split the two Strads with a second place beating Hill after Martin W Jones.

Megan had obviously warmed up sufficiently to ‘normal mode’ in the third race in the dying breeze followed by Jonathon and Martin.

Day two started with a postponement, no wind at all! In fact we were all in ‘pack up for the weekend’ mode as it looked set in for the day. However, after much coffee consumed we were reminded to look out onto the reservoir as some slight ripples had appeared and the competition was re invigorated.

Having been locked out of his car Martin was forced to miss the first race of the day, solved by the RAC in 20seconds (don’t buy a Peugeot) but it wasn’t to be a good Strad day in the really light breeze. Jonathon Currell was the one to dominate, especially in the final race, forcing Megan to utilize every lap to catch up and eventually overtake.

So overall Megan won the day with two well-fought first positions and we saw some excellent racing, a new threat to Megan in the name of Jonathon Currell and some new designs to consider for the future.