North East Clubs 2008 Early Series Summary report
This series continues to be popular with a total of 17 skippers taking part in the three event winter series held over January to March 2008 at the North East Clubs of Brechin, Aberdeen and Buchanness.
This equals the good level of participation seen in the late 2007 series showing that the format remains popular. Brechin Club had most entrants in the series with 7 skippers and the average entry over the series was 10 boats which is up on the same series in 2007.
The standard of racing and race management is continuing to progress. Opportunity was taken to give experience to club members in RO duties, scoring and course setting with John Owens running the Aberdeen event and Brian Robertson running the Buchanness event. The format agreed at the AGM for starting advantages and running 2 races and a break was used successfully. Also at Brechin and Aberdeen the “bye boat” method was used to take race observers out of the fleet.
The Brechin event had to be rescheduled twice due to severe weather and ice on the lake but was eventually run in March – third time lucky.
The worthy winner of the series was Ali Law from Buchanness who won the Buchanness and Aberdeen events and once again has retained the North East Clubs Quaich trophy. Ali competed throughout the series with his wooden Tejas design. He was closely followed a point behind by Ian Dundas who has gone back to using his Stealth MK1. Brian Robertson finished third sailing his Topiko which showed excellent speed and shows just how much Brian has improved. Neil Jardine with a Wooden Kite and Colin Deakin with his new Widget came 4th equal unable to be split with both counting 2nd and 7th places. Steve Taylor with his wooden Zig Zag made 6th place in the series. It was good to see that 3 self build wooden boats finished in the top 6.
The next Winter Series is scheduled to be held at Brechin on 25th October 2008, Aberdeen on 14th November 2008 and Buchanness on 13th December 2008. All skippers will be very welcome.
Overall Results for the 2008 Early Series:
| Pos | Skipper | Club | Boat | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Ali Law | Buchanness | Tejas (w) | 2 |
| 2. | Ian Dundas | Aberdeen | Stealth | 3 |
| 3. | Brian Robertson | Buchanness | Topico | 6 |
| 4= | Neil Jardine | Brechin | Kite (w) | 9 |
| 4= | Colin Deakin | Buchanness | Widget | 9 |
| 6 | Steve Taylor | Aberdeen | Zig Zag (w) | 10 |