North East Clubs 2006 Late Series Event 3 – Buchanness – 9th December 2006

Report by Ali Law

The Buchanness Radio Yacht Club hosted the last of the N/E Travellers at their reservoir just west of Peterhead and contrary to the met office, the day dawned with a clear blue sky and a temperature of 5°C. The wind was from the NW blowing just on number 2 rig, which it did for most of the day.

Eight hardy souls turned out, with Peterhead new member Ian Thomson watching the starting line and taking down finishing places, this was a great help as it kept everyone on the water. The other hardy souls were: Richard Ennos from Edinburgh ( wearing his Scottish district chairman’s hat ), Ian Dundas from Aberdeen, Jimmy Bisset from Aberdeen, Bill Reid from Buchanness, Brian Robertson from Buchanness, Colin Deacon from Buchanness and Ali Law from Buchanness.

As the reservoir is in the middle of essential repairs to the banks, we had to sail from the far bank. This brought some benefits but was outweighed by the loss of the launching stage, the distance from the car park and the shelter that the boundary wall affords.

Ali Law acted as the course setter and started by setting up the usual triangle and sausage course. With the wind direction from the NW, the weather mark was some distance away and was hard to judge at times. The jibe and leeward marks were quite close. However, after two races we had a break from sailing to permit Ali time to adjust the position of the weather mark by bringing it nearer so that the vision disadvantaged could see it more clearly. The wind behaved quite well with only changes in velocity and hardly any in direction – most unusual.

Sailing got underway at about 10.15. We sailed the usual set of three races and a break (although we did adjust this to suit our needs). Colin Deacon who has only been sailing real boats ( one metres ) for two months was the only starter with a handicap, he was on 60secs. After he managed six wins his handicap was dropped to 50secs – however, he later retired due to power failure; the boat not him. We did witness a tremendous improvement in the standard of sailing both in tuning and rule awareness with Shaky getting my vote for best improver, he put in some good results but fell down somewhat at the four boats circle not fully understanding “his rights”. Brian Rob managed most of the day to sail and not tweek, but Brian enjoys sailing and especially tweeking!! It was good to see Richard Ennos making the effort to come up from Edinburgh and what a welcome; high winds, high waves, hard competition and terrific company. Richard was sailing his own design and build which showed a lot of promise – with some more practice in the prevailing conditions he should do really well. Ali showed some of his old form but could not get the consistancy needed to win regattas ( too many boat changes ). Ian on the other hand sailed well and has now got the Stealth ( hard to admit ) flying and was getting the “breaks” but again that is sailing, making it happen for you. Ian ran out a worthy winner but the pressure was beginning to tell because at one point he thought his sails were turning pink.

It was a hard days sailing with the wind at times gusting up to 24mph and blowing on to our faces, this was very tiring and when the wind struck the yachts it made them hard to control, but they were flying. The start was particularly difficult with large waves rolling down and with the boats just making way ready for the go, at this point many lost control and the yachts fell by but it was great sailing in those conditions testing yachts and skippers.

For those who made the effort the day was a resounding success with all the sailing being conducted in a thoughtful and harmonious way, with the more experienced skippers pointing out to the less experienced where they were going wrong. If anything, the day proved yet again that when the rules are given their rightful place it enhances the sailing. We finished up at about 3pm after sailing 23 races around quite a long course, this was possible because there were no protests, there were a few discussions as to responsibility but all took their turns and settled and left it on the water.

Final positions were:

Summary of results series