Our new Calendar of Events is now published, click here to find out more
Castle Semple Sailing Club Calendar of Events 2020
Our new Calendar of Events is now up on the website, click here to find out more
The GP14 and Enterprise Travellers Event at CSSC 2019
Firstly a huge thank you to all those who gave up their time over the weekend to help run this event, we could not have done without you. The event as always with Castle Semple Sailing Club a great success, although the numbers were small – a select group of sailors everyone had a great time. Although the wet dismal weather really did not help, there was some great sailing. Therefore, no nice sunny photos this year although we did have a photographer from Yachts and Yachting with us on Saturday so hopefully he managed to get some good shots.
Disappointingly once again we only had our regular GP14 visitors Sue Watson and Alan Jones and this year only 2 visiting Enterprise boats – Charles and Alison Morrish , with crew Ellianna Prout and Richard and Maureen Denny who are all now good friends of the club.
The sailors from the Club’s Enterprise class this year only comprised of Team Pam and the GP14 Fleet were Arthur Logan and Iain Hardy, Paul O’Neill and Alice Patterson (sailing Peter Collings boat) and Steve Davison and me. For various reasons others were unable to take part – family, work, illness etc.
However, the now regular competitive battle between home team Arthur and Iain and Sue and Alan gave us plenty of entertainment.
There were 3 races each day. The unanimous decision on each day was to “just get it over with” and go for 3 back to back races. However just to sail the correct course required extreme memory skills as Angus conjured up some telephone number courses using some buoy numbers twice. Only buoy 2 was excluded to avoid frightening the novice windsurfers.
The Saturday racing was mostly without incident although Steve and I had a minor collision with Maureen and Richard in their Enterprise……. and in the second race Alan and Sue were deemed by the Race Team to be over the start line so they retired and just before the end of the third and final race for the day in some very gusty winds around buoy 6 Charles and Ellianna in the lead looked like they were going for an investigation of the murky Castle Semple Loch waters and.,…….then decided to have a better look……probably due to the lack of recent rain fall (that is up until Saturday night) inevitably the mast got stuck in the mud necessitating a rescue from the “magnificent men” in the Whally – BB told me since the race was close to the finish and sailors were coping with the conditions they were contemplating taking the Whally out of the water (but still having the committee boat available) – when they actually had to go and perform a rescue, which no doubt delayed BBs arrival at the pub. However, no harm done except a couple of very cold and wet sailors.
Sunday morning started less windy than forecast and marginally less damp. Paul and Alice retired part way through the first race of the day (ie the 4th race) due to a minor boat malfunction (don’t worry Peter your boat is fine!) and Richard and Maureen also retired for similar reasons in the 5th race. The wind did increase and it was particularly gusty around buoy 6 all weekend.
Many thanks to Arthur for organising a dinner in the Loch House on Saturday night, I gather baby Hannah of Team Pam was the star of the evening.
As I said the weekend couldn’t have been run without the help of members, particular thanks to Angus for acting as Race Officer and for keeping all the races timed to around 40- 45 minutes – to the “magnificent men” in the support boat, Mark Simmonds (otherwise known as Sparkie) and Brian Young (otherwise known as BB or Big Brian) and Steve Cochrane (otherwise known as BBQ Steve for his barbecue skills) – and Angus is of course “The Master Vortexer”. Thanks to Alice and Arthur for the soup and to Jan and Oliver for support in recording the results and Eleanor and Alice for help in the kitchen – and I think Stan was there too – and anyone else I have forgotten.
And thanks to Paul O’Neill for organising the engraving of the winners’ glasses.
During the weekend there was a general discussion as to whether next year we should make the event an open event for all classes – will let you know if this is progressed.
I gather Arthur and Iain and Alan and Sue’s next encounter is at North Berwick next weekend – I wonder who will win that one!
The final results were:
GP14 Fleet:
1st Arthur Logan and Iain Hardy
2nd Alan Jones and Sue Watson. (Bassenswaite SC)
3rd Steve Davison and Dawn Kyne
Full results are HERE
Enterprise Fleet:
1st Charles Morrish and Ellianna Prout. (St Mary’s Loch SC)
2nd Doug McQuilken and Pamela Hunter (otherwise known as Team Pam)
3rd Richard and Maureen Denny (SESCA)
Full results are HERE
Sailability Scotland Challenger Traveller Series at CSSC 2019
Once again we were lucky enough to have a lovely sunny weekend for the Scottish Sailability Challenger event – 2 glorious days of sunshine but sadly not a lot of wind until after the racing had finished at Sunday lunchtime.
Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who came along to help – we couldn’t have done it without you. Special thanks to Angus for RO duties, Alice for organising all the food, Mark for safety boat and Steve C , Brian and Stan as assistants, Hugh and Oliver for helping on Friday afternoon to assemble the boats.
Since there were only 5 visiting boats this year and Jon was unable to find any takers to sail his 2 challengers Jon said he would sail one and was looking for someone else to sail the other one as his eyes landed on me……never having sailed one before I can say in all honesty once there is a bit of wind they are great fun to sail.
5 races were planned over the 2 days. After an interesting first race with the wind going from nothing to quite a good breeze and then totally changing direction resulting in a shortened course, it was time for lunch and who should turn up but Stan…….but also so did Jan and her friend Laura – as Jan said they timed it just right they walked in to the compound and sat down to lunch! Great to see Jan looking so well.
After a good lunch it was back to the challenge of the wind for a further 2 races, personally I enjoyed my investigation of the far side of the loch making friends with the swans on a sunny afternoon I had my picnic (juice and chocolate) with me so no problem that there was no wind and I could take a while to get back – although I did accept a tow back after the second race. Meanwhile, Jon was out for a win giving Duncan Greenhalgh and Alex a good run for their money.
Forecast for Sunday was nae wind as far as I was concerned, but others must have seen a different website as the consensus was wind was definitely forecast to arrive at 10am or maybe 11am……. so the final 2 races started – slowly and continued slowly although on the final race the wind did pick up and I thought there was a chance that I might not be in my now customary last position but alas at the final buoy both Dik and Ronnie passed me.
After more food and the prize giving it was time to pack up and for the helpers time to get out and enjoy the now substantial breeze for the afternoon.
Final Results are here
Some pictures from the weekend are here
Asymmetric Cup 2019
I think the best part was the glorious warm sunny day! The wind was slightly better than forecast and did look promising for a while, however after 30 minutes or so into the first race it began to dwindle away.
We had 6 asymmetric boats racing plus Leo in his laser. The course was fairly lengthy 1,6,3,9,2 well it became lengthy with the wind gradually dropping off. After a second race with a slightly shorter course of 1,7,2 two boats retired and the rest struggled on.
After a good lunch -thanks to Jules for the soup (none left!) – to Izzie for the quiches (all gone) and Mrs Alan for one of her delicious cakes (of course all eaten) – a debate ensued as to whether it was worth a third tortuous race – Tom had had enough, the Master Vortexer having retired from the second race was busy working on his EPS…..but he was called back to work out whether it was worth Brian going back out on the water……
so the results were:
1st Brian and Alan – RS Vision
2nd Tom – Vago
3rd Steve and Heather – RS Vision
From the pictures, you can see a suspicious looking character was seen out in Stan’s cruising boat!
Well done to all. This is the second year of a no wind Asymmetric Cup day so I think we might look at changing the weekend next year. The upside of the day was anyone who was due to be at a Mother’s Day event probably arrived in good time!
Many thanks to all those who helped – Team Pam (+ Hannah), apprentice Sparkie to the RO, Jan, Eleanor and I am sure Stan and Ollie and anyone else who I have forgotten.
CSSC Scottish Team Racing Castle Semple Loch 2019
Hi all
As you know we hosted a Scottish Team Racing Association event today, after the very damp day on Friday the forecast didn’t look good for Saturday. After a brief hail storm at the start of the racing, the day was actually mostly dry and sunny.
However the wind was very temperamental and I suspect I wasn’t too popular with one of the students telling him that the wind usually increased between 12 and 1pm and then settled down ……oops, no it did not settle down at all, some horrendous gusts followed.
All the competitors ended up investigating the murky waters of Castle Semple Loch at some point during the afternoon. One poor guy hadn’t brought a change of clothes – but thankfully Arthur came to the rescue.
Another female fell out of her boat and spent some time being rescued meanwhile their fellow team boat was seen to capsize.
Peter revealed it was the first time in 6 years that he had capsized in a firefly – so that gives some indication of how gusty it was.
The windsurfing club were running an event at the same time giving some interesting manoeuvres for the racing, and at one point in the afternoon several windsurfing boards “resting” on a pontoon took off on their own, such were the gusts,
However, a good time was had by all and they planned to head to a pub for the evening to recover.
The Castle Semple Team of Arthur, Hugh, Peter and various crew were third out of 6 teams so a good result – well done!
Dawn
Vortex National at Yorkshire Dales Sailing Club
Two of our Vortex fleet went to the National event hosted by the Yorkshire Dales Sailing Club.
Our GP14 and Enterprise Traveller Week End
Hi everyone
Once again Team Castle Semple rose to the challenge and delivered a fantastic weekend for our visitors (OK there was a slight hiccup with the breakfast on Sunday morning – but only because more people had come to the event than we anticipated (seems word has got out that we are a friendly welcoming club so people want to come to our events ) – everyone got fed in the end). Once again the weather gods were on our side with warm sunshine the whole weekend and the strong easterly winds made for some challenging but enjoyable sailing.
We had 15 boats in total taking part – 9 Enterprise (7 visitors and 2 home) and 6 GP14 (1 visitor and 5 home).
Huge thanks as always to Angus Winchester for his role as Race Officer with assistance from Duncan Elder and Jim Tytler in the Committee Boat and to Mark Simmonds and Brian Young in the safety boat, and also to Jan Gordon and 1 part of Team Pam for recording all the results and to Jules Whitestone and others (some visitors) for helping in the kitchen etc.
Angus, as always kept to a tight schedule, and on Saturday the consensus was that 3 back to back races should be run “to get it over with!”. Race 1 saw several capsizes but after that the competitors got the measure of the wind strength and race 2 went without incident. Race 3 saw an encounter with 2 Enterprises – Chris and Paul Owen and Charles Morrish and Alison Robertson Morrish disqualifying them from the race, Chris and Paul Owen did not finish the race due to the collision but both boats were not damaged badly so were able to continue competing in subsequent races. Separately, Loz Young and Barry O’Sullivan’s boat was damaged due to the strength of the wind stressing the structure of the boat putting them out of the competition. But on the plus side the “tight schedule” meant that there was plenty of time to sit and enjoy the sunshine and good company – with the odd beer or to thrown in before 28 of us moved on to the Loch House for a very enjoyable evening although it has to be said it was not a late night – still we were lucky that Mike Heap joined us after getting locked into the compound!
Sunday morning looked like the wind had abated ….but that turned out to be for the first race only as the wind strengthened again. The 6th and final race saw saw a close finish for several Enterprises and couple GP14 capsizes for those who are normally unaccustomed to investigating the murky waters of Castle Semple Loch. Our GP14 visitors Alan Jones and Sue Watson were continually chasing the home team of Arthur Logan and Iain Hardy but even after taking some late night tips from Angus, Arthur and Iain were still out of reach….there is always next year Alan!
So the final winners were:
Enterprise fleet:
First: Richard Pryke and Amelia Pryke. (Ripon)
Second: Chris Owen and Paul Owen. ( Royal Highland)
Third: Charles Morrish and Alison Roberton Morrish. ( St Mary’s Loch)
GP14 Fleet
First: Arthur Logan and Iain Hardy. (CSSC)
Second: Alan Jones and Sue Watson. (Bassenswaite)
Third : Tom Kelly and Matt. (CSSC)
Thanks to everyone who came along and to Paul O’Neill for supplying the trophies and to our sponsors Gael Force Marine for supplying the prizes, still not sure what Pam is going to do with that Shark !
Dawn
Commodore