Yachting Club
Closing regattas; how to pass your Permis
I am sure you all have the Closing regatta in the forefront of your minds: Sunday 16 October, usual time and place - and your last chance to get your name on the ranking (or higher than it already is!) for this season. Don’t worry if you are a relative beginner or have only slight experience of regattas so far: we normally manage to place everybody on a boat and participation is the main objective. Yes, autumn is here but the Lake is magnificent at this time and a recent outing was made magic for your correspondent by gentle steam rising off the water into the colder air. (Cynics would say «oh, so there was no wind?» but then, they would also miss the beauty of Mont Blanc!) Haude’s photo herewith from the Match-Racing a while back shows how you should be doing it.
Your intrepid correspondent also recently «authorised» use of a Club Surprise for a Permis Lac test - in the sense that the candidate (a Club member of course) could not legitimately take the boat out since he did not yet have the requisite Permis. We would like to put on record that the test with a Lake Examiner is not as terrifying as sometimes reported (or were we lucky, with a charming and interested expert?). In the end, although we went through some manoeuvres (less than totally successful; we would have required a repeat MOB for our own internal tests!), it felt more like a pleasant outing with friends and resulted in the magic Permis voile. Autumn draws on; do not delay your own test too long. Success will set you up for next season!
