Fastnet Race – Brechin – 21st March 2009

Report by RO Neil Jardine

This year’s Scottish Fastnet Race, once again hosted by Brechin saw a total of 10 boats/teams entered. The format followed that of previous years along with last year’s innovation of an age allowance. This year’s team and solo entries came only from the NE clubs, Peterhead, Aberdeen and Brechin. It would have been good to see members from further afield attending too but perhaps next year.
The Fastnet Race is an endurance event with a series of 30 minute races run over the day. Each skipper picks up a token after completing a lap. After 30 minutes a sound signal hails the end of the race and skippers duly cash in their lap tokens with the race scorer. Handicaps are then applied to adjust for different classes and in order to encourage participation from older boats, a further adjustment was made to take account of the age of each hull design. The boat with the highest number of laps (adjusted for class and age) wins the Fastnet Shield.

The mix of boats was not as diverse as last year, seeing a seven strong fleet of IOM’s of varying vintages starting. Ali Law’s 6 Metre ‘Renaissance’ returned to defend the title, again skippered by the dynamic duo of ‘Ballistic’ Brian Robertson and ‘Shakey’ Bill Reid. Ralph Knowles brought along a Tony Able designed ‘Challenger’ Marblehead however by race 5, electrical problems saw him fall back to his trusty Turquoise Isis. Once again, the most majestic boat on the pond was Colin McGinnis’ A Class Emperor, returning with minor modifications from last year such as a larger rudder.

After a short briefing, RO Neil Jardine assisted by ‘capable newbie’ to model boating Lynn Connor got the racing underway with a very light SW air under sunny skies. The wind was it’s usual light fickle self with the odd puff coming in from the East as well as swirling round the bare trees. This made conditions tricky and the collection of tokens in race 1 very slow with Ian and John skippering the fastest boat only collecting 3 tokens for half an hour’s focused concentration. The rest of the fleet only managed 2 tokens and this was to become crucial later in the day.

With conditions much kinder to the boats this year, there was much less need for emergency stops and tweaks and a further 2 races were completed before stopping for lunch. By now the wind had steadied from the West somewhat and most boats were collecting between 4 and 5 tokens per race showing an increase in pace.

After lunch the course was changed to suit the strengthening wind which had been forecast, now veering to the NW. This better wind meant the larger, heavier boats now had a fighting chance, as the IOM’s had been running away with the morning session. Race five saw most boats collecting between eight and nine tokens and by now the race team were glad to be keeping a tally of each boat’s lap count as a double check precaution such was the pace of racing. Ali Law was frequently seen hopping around the control area ‘encouraging’ Sandy, his team mate, tactically. Unfortunately at one point the judgement call made was wrong and saw a collision with Colin’s A Class in a port/starboard situation – the brand new Pikanto was always going to come off worse and Team Law were fortunate to only suffer a stretched headsail – it could have been so much worse. Ali was heard saying after the incident “I should just keep my mouth shut!” Unfortunately this put an end to their chances of winning the event.

The final race saw a drop in the wind and with the competition too close to call between 1st and 2nd place it was going to be down to the wire. The Blue Toon Boys with the R6M put up a valiant effort chasing Ian and John’s wooden IOM matching them round for round until the very last where they collected one less token. This was the final clincher and saw the Aberdeen Lads run out victorious overall by less than two laps on corrected scores. Third place was shared by Bert Powell and David Stewart, inseparable after almost 30 laps over the day and only two laps behind the winners.

This year’s event was as good natured and friendly as I’ve seen, with the control area banter being legendary. This was mostly thanks to Messrs Owens, Reid and Robertson – many thanks gentlemen! All told the event went off without hitch and everyone seemed to enjoy the day. Conditions improved and the facilities, as always, made life more amenable.

A final thought, it might boost entries if in future we could perhaps handicap the IOM’s a little more to encourage more and varied vintage classes to participate. Or perhaps a separate prize for the IOM’s would be a possibility?

Final results were:

Detailed final results table (pdf file)