IOM Scottish Events 2011 Ayr Bay Open Meeting – 25th June 2011
Report by Richard Rowan
14 skippers from all over Scotland arrived at the pond side at Ayr Bay for the club’s annual IOM open meeting. The local skippers were more than pleased to welcome Ian Dundas who had travelled down from Aberdeen.
Unfortunately, the skippers were faced with light and fluky winds from the NE (which is the direction of the large Magnum Leisure Centre near by) instead of the forecast 6 to 8 knots from the other direction. RO Ken Hathaway got the event running very promptly at 10am and despite Gordon Neil commenting that “this is the worst wind direction to sail in”, the first 4 races proved interesting and challenging. Ian Dundas and Richard Rowan showed their form by sharing the top spots with Robert Rooney not far behind.
Race 5 went very slowly as the wind started to veer towards the forecast direction. After a quick adjustment to the course, Ken got the fleet back into race mode in a initially very light wind from the West which gradually over the course of the day built up to the forecast SW strength and direction. At this point Robert Rooney took a very firm grip on the event with a run of 5 wins, with Richard Rowan following just behind. John Matheson was also sailing well with a good set of top placings. Ian Dundas started to drop off the pace a little, he was overheard saying that “these Bantock boats were quick downwind”. He was only confirming what we could all see – the Picanto (John), Topico (Robert) and Italiko (Richard) were regularly appearing at the front of the fleet.
RO Ken keep the racing running at a good pace, initially using short windward/leeward courses but gradually extending their length as the wind built. He had also set out 4 windward marks which permitted him to quickly adjust the direction of the beat without any delay to the racing. This resulted in a total of 22 races sailed which is a very good considering the wind strength. He was also firm with the fleet making sure that the inevitable “tiffs” were dealt with quickly.
So, as the day grew to a close, it was very clear that Robert and Richard were out in front and probably very close to each other in their total score. However, the last two races proved decisive in establishing the winner. In both these races, Richard got a nose in front down the final run but hit the leeward mark in the penultimate race dropping two places and was overtaken by Robert and Ian in the last race to finish third. Robert took 3 points advantage over these two races to give him a winning margin of 2 points.
Footnote from Richard Rowan
As a visitor to the Club, I would very much like to thank Ayr Bay for running such an enjoyable event, and would also encourage the club members to keep working at their boats and honing their sailing skills. The club members generally filled the bottom half of the points table but that is only to be expected at this point in the development of the club IOM fleet. Keep working at it, get some training and boat tuning help from outside, continue running such excellent events and your results will steadily improve.