Buchaness MYC – IOM Scottish Ranking Race – 8th-9th July 2006

Overall Results
Competitors individual race results
Saturday’s winner
John Tushingham

Race Report

After many months of preparation, Saturday morning arrived and 26 skippers duly gathered once again at the loch side at Castle Semple Water Sports Centre near Paisley. The Castle Semple facility has become the unofficial home of the Scottish District for national events, the centre boasts superb sailing conditions with an excellent on shore control area, adjacent car parking and a well appointed café and toilets.

The race team for the weekend was drawn from all over Scotland with every club in the district being represented in the race team. Also, there was at least one competitor from each club. RO for Saturday was Alistair Law from Buchanness (under which auspices the event was being run), assistant RO for both days was Boyd Baird from the Brechin club, the scorer agian for both days was David Loomes from the Paisley club, David being joined by club mates Robert Rooney and John Matheson who looked after the starting and finishing lines. The rescue boat was manned by Jimmy Bisset from Aberdeen and Jimmy Rodger from Brechin – they also acted as course setters. The race observer co-ordinator was Kathy Reid from the Buchanness club who plodded on through rain or shine. On Sunday Richard Ennos from Levenhall took over as RO and Hughie Shields from the Greenock club came in as line judge allowing Robert Rooney to sail.

Prior to commencing sailing, assistant RO and Scottish District Senior Measurer Boyd Baird weighed all the boats and also made a number of other important measurement checks. Unfortunately, six boats were found to be light and had to add ballast prior to racing. As the regatta progressed, Boyd also pulled out boats at random for spot checks. However, the fact that 23% of the fleet had at least one measurement issue at check in proves that we need to pay more attention to measurement. Pre-event measurement and spot checks should be a regular part of our regattas.

So, everything and everyone was in place – only the wind had to play ball.

The RO briefing was late to start ( 9.50 ) yet we had the first race on the water at about 10.15. A triangle and sausage course was set and with the wind coming in from the west (ie parallel to the shore), once the start line was adjusted, we were fortunate that the course didn’t require any further adjustment throughout the entire day. 2 heats were sailed. However, during the day, the wind velocity varied between the top end of A rig and the middle of B rig, thereby causing problems for boats getting promotion and for observers. RO Alistair decided to allow adequate rig changing time for the affected skippers (seen to be a good idea).

The winners of the two seeding races were Ken Binks and Mark Dennis. Ken kept up his challenge all day and eventually ran out second while Mark slipped back and came out 8th. John Tushingham, who was on his first visit to the Scottish district, kept his cool and managed to get a very good first in the regatta sailing a new David Creed boat that had only been measured the previous week.

Over the whole day we had one protest and that was for redress, the skippers sailed with exceptional good humour and we never heard a raised voice over the whole weekend. All skippers are congratulated for their sportmanship, as is the race team who kept things moving along at a steady pace.

Top Scottish skipper on Saturday was Ian Dundas bringing his Stealth home in 7th place. Ian has got the boat going really well and showed that, in the right hands, the Stealth is a boat to win regattas.