IOM Scottish Travellers 2010 Event 1 – Greenock – 20th March 2010

Report by Richard Rowan    Score Sheet  Competitor List

A cloudy outlook with a gentle breeze from the west greeted the skippers arriving at Murdieston Dam for the first of the 2010 Scottish IOM Travellers series. Race Officer Hughie Shields was expecting a record entry of 30 boats but on the day, only 25 took to the water. Starting advantages of 20 secs were offered to 10 skippers. The racing was run in 2 heats with a windward leeward style course. 4 boats went up and down.

As the racing commenced, it became clear that the wind had a slight slant off the bank giving Hughie problems in setting a course with an even first beat. The course eventually used had a long windward leg on starboard with a corresponding short leg on port. This compounded by a tendency for the starboard leg to be lifted as one approached the windward mark so that there didn’t seem to be much choice about how one sailed the first beat. However, it wasn’t as easy as that – every so often a wind shift would come through causing the starboard tack to be headed and the port favoured – if you were in the right place when a shift came through, you could make big gains (and of course big losses if you weren’t in the right place). So, it quickly became clear that a challenging day’s sailing was in prospect.

And so it proved – at the lunch break, it could be seen that all the top skippers were carrying one or more bad results. Ally Law was out in front with Richard Rowan chasing hard. Ian Dundas was uncharacteristically off the pace but that was primarily because he was sailing his new Tony Edwards designed Robot for the first time. Robert Rooney was also near the top of the leader board but fell back a bit with some relatively poor results in the middle races. John Taylor had come ashore at 9am and arrived at the event just in time to sail Hughie’s McShee Mk 1001 into the top boats.

One problem that emerged during the day concerned skippers who didn’t have a starting advantage when sailing in the B heat. In any B heat, there was usually at least 8 and commonly all 10 of the skippers with starting advantages present. Due to the nature of the course and the wind conditions, it became apparent that getting out of the B heat (ie finishing in the first 4 boats) without a starting advantage was a major problem. It may be necessary to review how starting advantages work in a 2 or more heat event. This problem is likely to appear again at Brechin later in the season due to the difficulty of laying good courses at the Castle Centre.

Nonetheless, as the sun came out and the wind strength held, it seemed that everyone was enjoying the days racing. Hughie kept the sailing running steadily and eventually acheived 9 races completed.

As the end of the event approached, the results show that Ally’s lead was eroded by Richard who managed a 1st place in race 9 to Ally’s 4th place. That final race meant that Richard came in first on the day with 14 points to Ali’s 15. Ian Dundas discarded a couple of very bad results to achieve 3rd place overall followed by Robert Rooney, Steve Taylor and Boyd Baird. Unfortunately, John Taylor’s event finished early when problems emerged on the McShee.

Top placings were: