Shenfield Oct 2014

Oh perfidious weather. Nice to be out in, not so good for casting. At least we were finished before the rain came. It was great to welcome Mike Marshall to  the only event he could come to this year. He seamlessly dropped back into the instructing which allowed me, for the first time this year, to concentrate more  on the competition with only the odd spell of instructing thrown in.

There was hardly a breeze and what there was couldn’t make up its mind which way it wanted to blow, plus, the air was heavy, so not the best conditions. It did make for some pretty close competition however. James 168′ in the T120 would normally be pretty average, well under par compared to his normal distances, the same for his 150′ in the T38, but in the conditions were winning casts. Tracy nearly blew us all away and came second only 7′ behind James but ahead of me, so we are going to make her an honorary man from now on.

After a bit of a break we came out to find a very slightly stronger breeze and after some discussion moved the tapes around to what we thought would be a more favourable direction, if slightly up hill, but sods law said that the moment we started casting again the breeze decided to swing this way and that and was no help to anyone. I dismissed my 104′ in the #5 as not in contention and was hugely surprised to find it the winning cast, Kei Okamoto, Alex Titov and John Reynolds not quite being able stick one a bit further. Again it was close in the #7 with James pipping Alex by 8”, 107.08” to 107′ with John only a couple of feet behind. John had a relatively easy win in the 27g, his 123′ outpaced James and I by some margin.

To end the competition we gave a first outing to our new accuracy event run to the same rules as the World Championships, four targets, three rounds with variable points depending on where you hit. A total of 60 points up for grabs. Once more it was close with John Reynolds on 42 and Mark and I tying for second with 40 each.

Overall winner on the day was Mr consistent, James Evans, a worthy champion.

Special thanks to Steve from Shenfield CC for providing is with a continuous supply of coffee, tea and sandwiches. Much appreciated by everyone.

So there you have it, nothing outstanding but some close completion which made for a nice relaxed meeting. Coupled with Mike Marshall and Mark Surtees doing their usual sterling work giving instruction and everyone chipping in to help out it was a very nice end to the 2014 season.

MikeH

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2014 at 12:49 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.