IOM Scottish Travellers Event 4 – Greenock – 16th July 2005

Nine skippers turned out for the 4th Travellers of the year at Greenock. It was good to see Robert Rooney sailing – Robert is normally to be found doing some duty or other on the race team. Also sailing was Bob Collins from Paisley, he has been absent from the Travellers series since last year. Shakey Bill was sailing his new (green) Stealth for the first time.

Race Officer Hugh Shields got the racing started in a good westerly breeze with a strength just at the top of the A rig. The general wind direction remained in the west throughout the day but there were quite large shifts about the mean direction. Consequently, the racing was very intense with places to be made or lost depending on which side of a shift you might be on. In one race, Ian Dundas pulled up from eighth round the last mark to second over the finishing line by simply going further out to starboard than anyone else up the last beat.

Unfortunately, there was some weed in the pond – if you picked up some weed and were lucky, you could just lose the edge of your boat speed – if not, you could be slowed down quite significantly. It was fortunate that the event was held this weekend, it is likely that the weed will develop considerably over the next few weeks with the possibility of the event being cancelled or postponed.

Eight races were held in the morning session – the conditions produced four boats each having one or more wins. At lunch time, Ian Dundas had worked out a useful lead over Richard Rowan and Ali Law. The afternoon session saw another 10 races completed. Richard started to get the bit between his teeth after lunch and produced an excellent run of results to eventually win the event. Ian Dundas held on to come in second only 4 points behind Richard. Unfortunately, Ali Law had 3 bad races counting two 7ths and one 8th. With eventually only 2 discards applying, that increased his final score sufficiently so that he finished in 3rd position. Although David Loomes was frequently top be seen at the front of the fleet, he wasn’t able to produce the necessary low race finishing positions and eventually took fourth position overall (perhaps its time for him to upgrade his IOM).

Score sheet