IOM NE-SW Clubs Regatta 14th-15th October at Woodspring MSC Portishead

Report by Richard Rowan

Score sheets Saturday    Sunday

The second annual IOM North East – South West club regatta was held at the Woodspring lake at Portishead on 14th and 15th October. This event is considered by the organisers to be a friendly fun event between IOM skippers based in the NE of Scotland and their friends in the SW of England, with considerable emphasis on the social side. Originally conceived out of a friendship between Ian Dundas from Aberdeen and Trevor Bamforth from Woodspring, the event has produced some very competitive and intense IOM racing in both years so far, with equally good socialising on the Friday and Saturday evenings – wives being noticebale by their attendance.
The event is scored by adding up the positions for each skipper after each days sailing – the district with the lowest aggregate count wins the Quaich trophy.

Saturday

RO Mike Hounsell assisted by Alan Chidgey got the racing started with a 5 to 10 knot breeze from the east – this direction is apparently a very uncommon direction at Woodspring which maybe explains why the Scottish skippers took an early lead for the weekend. However, the SW district perhaps also suffered because Trevor Bamforth was unable to take part and Nick Martin suffered a series of boat problems over the day. Saturday saw the two NE district stalwart skippers Ian Dundas and Alistair Law assisted by guest NE skipper Richard Rowan take the first three positions followed by John Fairbairn from the SW.

Top placings were

Sunday

Sunday’s RO Alan Chidgey assisted by Martin Ward found the conditions very similar to Saturday with perhaps a slightly greater range of wind strengths and more south in the wind direction especially at the windward mark which was positioned not far away from the island in the centre of the Portishead lake. The racing on Sunday was extremely competitive with all three top skippers from Saturday plus Trevor Bamforth having similar numbers of good results and not so good results. Frequently, places would change dramatically on the beats as the wind changed from favouring one side of the course to favouring the other. However, at the end of the day, it was clear that Richard Rowan and Ian Dundas from the NE had got the better of Trevor Bamforth and Nick Martin from the SW, in fact the racing between Richard and Ian was so close that 1st place for the day was only resolved on a 5 race countback. Despite the top SW skippers not achieving the desired results, the lower ranked SW skippers did manage to reduce the Saturday deficit but not by enough to change the overall result.

Top placings were

Overall result
NE Clubs 5.6
SW Clubs 8.4