Fleetwood Twixmas Regatta for DF95 & IOM
Mulled wine, hot mince pies, Stollen, and a big tub of Quality Street!
Report by Derek Priestley, photographs by Mark Rose
Sat 27th & Sun 28th were this years “Twixmas” Regatta for radio yachts at Fleetwood MYC.
19 DF95’s and 36 IOM’s has initially entered but we had a few dropouts and so just 17 DF95’s and 30 IOM’s actually competed.
Saturday 27th – DF95’s
Saturday started with almost no wind which came & went and shifted around the mainly easterly direction. Eventually it sort of settled at about 3 to 4 knots and we were able to complete 10 races interspersed by breaks for hot mince pies & mulled wine plus lunch before the 3pm cut off time. Peter Baldwin (Birkenhead) beat John Tushingham (Keighley) on count back to take the win, with John Brierley (Birkenhead) rounding out the podium.
Sunday 28th – IOM’s
On Sunday there was more of the same shifty light winds for the start, but now we had 2 fleets for the R.O. Shaun Holbeche and scorer Judith Baldwin, to manage. But they cracked on and managed to get 14 heats (7 races) completed by 3pm with lots of mince pies etc consumed and a slightly stronger and steadier wind compared to Saturday. The event was won by Rob Walsh (Fleetwood) by 1 point from Graham Elliott (Birkenhead) and James Hadden (Gosport) in third.
The scoring for both events was undertaken using a trial prototype scoring system with discards (drops) at 3, 7 and 14 races. Thus the iOM’s were fortunate to have two discards after only seven races.
The next big events coming up for DF95’s and IOM’s are both at WLYC (Southport) on the 7/8 Feb and 7/8 March respectively. For further details on these and others, see the full list of events for 2026 as usual on the MYA website https://www.mya-uk.org.uk/events/