North East Clubs 2006 Early Series Event 1 – Buchanness – 25th February 2006

Six skippers congregated at Buchanness for the first of the North East Early 2006 Series.

There were three visitors from Aberdeen and three skippers from the local club. Those from further south who had planned to attend called off due to the poor weather forecast. The wind was (cold) NNE backing to N, fresh to strong on the border line between rigs one and two. The sky was overcast with occasional light rain.

Alistair Struthers was officiating as OOD and Ali Law braved the elements to set the marks for a long Olympic course. Skippers had a difficult choice to make between No1 or No2 rigs.

The first race showed that those with No1 rigs (Ali Law and Ian Dundas) benefited in the region of the windward mark which was influenced by a wind shadow from the north shore but the big rigs were often overpowered downwind in the gusts and the No2 rigged boats were able to move back towards the front. Good eyesight was needed to control boats at the distant windward mark as there were many serious wind shifts in that region.

The fleet trialed a new procedure which allowed late finishing boats to call for a tuning timeout of 3 minutes between races. This was requested at the recent AGM as the usual “Three and a Break” format was felt to disadvantage the back-markers who had no time to make adjustments or repairs before the start of the next race. The timeout system was further refined during the day to allow any skipper to call for a 3 minute timeout. This was seen to be beneficial for all especially on a day where the strong winds required skippers to make several adjustments and repairs to their boats. The traditional longer breaks were still held after each group of three races.

Ian Dundas got off to a good start with 4 wins on the trot – his Stealth coping well with the strong conditions. Ali Law came back to win a couple. Ken Ewen was rewarded with two wins and showed that steady sailing in these conditions without incidents can produce very good results. Jimmy Bisset and Brian Robertson also had win each.

Full results (pdf file)

Final positions were: