It was a day of protest at Dittisham Sailing Club last Sunday.

You see, for the first time in living memory, someone decided to formally raise a protest, after his inalienable, god-given, (constitutional?) right to tuck himself up under the committee boat on the start line, on starboard, without some interloper trying to usurp his space, had been infringed.

Worse, the miscreants had not responded to his urgent admonitions and when all’s said and done, enough is enough.

Now this situation happens fairly frequently on the start line and is either sorted out on the water with penalty turns, or, more usually, simply let slide.

All the old hands have been saying for years that we should have the occasional protest, otherwise no-one will learn the rules and chaos will reign.

Justice was swiftly meted out, but more of that later.

The forecast had been for a dismal three to four knots of breeze, so the mixed fleet was down to just 11 boats and although it was nominally ‘a Solo Day’ only three turned out to enjoy it.

In the event there was slightly more wind than expected and although it came and went it never dropped off completely.

The race officer set a simple triangular course, perfectly suited to the conditions and skilfully adjusted for the second race.

Race one and only three helms spotted the starboard bias on the line. Tacking off on to port immediately, these few arrived at the windward mark well ahead of the rest, who had put themselves out of contention within the first 30 seconds of the race. James Dodd in his Phan­tom eventually overtook Jon­athan Weeks in a Solo as did Roger Morley in his Vareo.

On the last leg of the course a Morley slow tack enabled Weeks to just beat him to the line and although Dodd got there just before either of them, it was Solo first, Phantom second and Vareo third on corrected time.

Race two produced all the excitement. There was still a generous starboard bias so this time, learning, so they thought, from their previous mistake, the main portion of the fleet hung back before the start and all swept in at the same time to attack the line at the committee-boat end.

Unfortunately their timing was off and they arrived, mostly on a reach, en masse but late and all trying to dive into the limited space beside the committee-boat. Jennie Richardson in her Streaker and Jonathan Weeks in a Solo, starting on time and just ahead of the main fleet, were off up the beat while a deafening chorus of shouted protests echoed across the water from behind. (It was at this point that the historic protest incident took place!)

On handicap, Jonathan Weeks was first, Janet Richardson took second place and Martin Ely was third. Back on land the protest was swiftly dealt with in an efficient fashion, the protest was upheld, the protester satisfied, the helm he was protesting was exonerated but the guy next to him was disqualified.

Two races, justice and history, all in a single day! What more could you ask for?