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