Loch Long Week

Yes it's been and gone but here is a start down on the Alde where those river boating types have taken the Loch Long as their very own and it is now the biggest and most successful class there. The class celebrates its 75th anniversary on the Clyde in 2012. John McMurtrie was there with Tamaru and whilst not doing better than an 11th out of 34 in the morning series they managed, after clearing hangovers with a cooked lunch, to pull 2nd in the aftenoon series out of 25.

crappy phone pic of Tamaru

They really are tidy little boats when you see them well fettled and trimmed.

Twa Hauned Race - updated again - see below

A fine day out and we all enjoyed it, minor whinges relating to the difficulties faced by the hard pressed race officer at the start notwithstanding. With a brisk 20kt westerly it was a close reach to the Holy Isle and a beam reach back - more or less- at least for us pussies on the short course. Course records were broken (see below) with 2.5 hours taken off FTSE's round Arran record by Tiso Thunderbird and Lady Rhona just 90 secs behind that. Alan Macleod reports that he and Jamie McGarry on Grand Cru managed a 3 sail reach in 30kts with a new Grand Cru speed record of 14.7kts at the bottom of Arran. That would have been something to put a grin on their faces.

Alan Henderson

FT$E, uncharacteristically, had chosen to do the short course and slowly pulled out their usual horizon job. On Troikka, Mark Bradshaw and I managed to hang on to Salamander XX in 3rd place pretty much up to the Holy Isle but at the exit from Lamlash bay they made a better job of getting out of the horrible calm patch and the boats behind us caught up rather too much. Despite deployment of our secret weapon, the Jib Top, we failed to extend a lead anything like enough to hold off the marauding Elan 333s but it was a cracking fast sail and we were back through the finish line before 3pm. Calima the Largs based Elan 333 made excellent pace throughout the race and was a well deserved winner. As I mentioned on the forum, the wee display by the single RAF Typhoon to mark our finish was awesome and the people of Largs were out in force as though the Vikings had reappeared.

Alan Henderson

Ken Brown with John McMurtrie, fresh from Loch Longing on the wilds of the River Alde on board Salaminor (ex Panty Thief and isn't that a much better name?) powers through the finish line doubtless happy to be so close to an Impala. Presumably it would have been quite bouncy at times for the wee boats and I was glad not to be on the E-boat we noticed at the start. One immersion this year was enough.

Alan Henderson

This apparently is Andrew Hutton's Oyster 406 'Malibu' sailing into something of a wind shadow after a bad start.

Alan Henderson

Largs Regatta week continues to be one of the best racing opportunities on the Clyde. We know a great deal of work goes into making it work as it does so on behalf of those of us who were not at the prizegiving I say many thanks to the hard working organisersand all power to you to make it even better next year.

Also thanks once again to Alan Henderson of fotoboat.com for the use of his photos.

Pete Wright sends in 'Some anoraking for you'

In Class 1 Lady Rhona (8:39:35) & Sloop JT, Grand Cru + Sunrise were also under FTSE 2007 record time. All Class 1 competitors corrected times were under the Hot 'n' Tot 2007 record.

In Class 2, Troikka, Salamander XX & A Neet Djin were all faster than 2007 elapsed time record. Calima was 7 seconds over 2007 elapsed record but all Class 2 corrected times were under the 2007corrected record.
All in all, quite an achievement!

Clydeport Cumbraes Regatta

Some photos sent in by Gordon Dundas on FT$E. Helps to remind us that the rain does actually go away from time to time.

Argie Bargie being the current holder of the unofficial title of 'sexiest boat on the Clyde' title does tend to get photographed rather a lot. You can comment elsewhere whether the title extends to the crew.

Here's one where you can comment on Prime Suspect's mainsail trim. What would Mr Highcock have to say?

All photos Alan Henderson - fotoboat

As you can see the sun rose over Largs on Saturday and we enjoyed a good day out with 2 windward leewards for the two IRC classes and who knows what for the rest. We understand that the excuse for the above was that Sunrise's stand-in bowman was ex CCC race secretary Ian Thomson. Anyway, they weren't last in that race. Troikka was. I felt the IRC turnout wasn't quite as good as recent years with Class One being a very wide range from the thundering Farr 40 down to ourselves with Tanit and the 40.7s etc in between. Class 2 was pretty wide but then it always is with Farr-E-Nuff bringing up the rear and the extraordinary news this year is that Farr-E-Nuff did not win a single race. No. Not one. Not even on handicap. Speaking of wide class bands what about Lady Rhona (47.7 ex Moorish Idol) on 5.25 up to an Impala on 16.75? Cool. The brand new First 40 'Elf Too' of Robin and Christine Murray showed up on Sat and is understandably at the bottom of the tweaking curve as well as having a rating based on an unfeasibly light weight according to Chris Dodgshon. Smart looking tub though.

We thought we did a bit better on the second race which started pretty promptly after the end of the first. There were some wacky wind shifts which we found ourselves on the right side of and even in the highly unusual, nay unprecedented position of being ducked by Playing FT$E. zzzz
Who? Sorry I nodded off there. Yes poor old FT$E. I know it takes huge efforts to crank the old bus round the course and they do it quite well but it's time for a new one. If we all ate our 5 a day it might help? The second race was shortened a bit before we expected and in Class 1 we thought another round would have been good as the wind was picking up nicely. Whatever. One rant I do want to have though was about the published intention not to announce premature starters on the VHF. Whyever not? This is 2009, we are all required to carry VHF radios and have to pay quite a hefty entry fee for this event. It has been possible in the past and it happens at the other regattas on the Clyde and I think that difficulty of finding sane and sighted individuals to assist on the committee boat would be a poor excuse. It can be really difficult to be sure you are OCS or not and the VHF call is not just an immensely helpful aid to not writing off a whole afternoon's racing as happened to Prime Suspect but reassurance to everyone else who wasn't. Racing fleets want the RO to talk to them to keep them informed and especially on key things like starts. We know race committees get a hard time and we really do appreciate their work which often must seem terribly unrewarding not to mention uncomfortable but this one definitely needs a re-think for next year.

Restricted sail doesn't get much of a mention here so this is Grebe, a Hallberg Rassy 29 no less with what I take to be Ian McDonald's Sigma 36 significantly to windward. Unusually for Ian he was only able to win one class in this configuration, there being no parallel IRC restricted sail category.

By the time the deafened revellers emerged from the sailing club and Regattas the wind and rain had arrived, increasing through the night until a watery and unwelcoming Sunday morning dawned. It was hard to work up enthusiasm for heading out into the murk and evidently it was too much for the Salamanders (or was that to do with a rumour I heard of Stevie's engagement the previous night?) but the rain stopped temporarily for sails to be hoisted. I thought the RO's choice of twice round the Great Cumbrae missing out the fig 8 was a good call given the bleak conditions and forecast. As it happened we had a jolly fine start on port - (some might call it a lucky escape) and went on to enjoy a good and relatively undemanding cruise, cracking off for the Tan, hoisting the spinnaker and a straight run up the other side all in not much more than 15k TWS. The breeze picked up to the 20s for the second round where we briefly saw 11.5kts boadspeed.

pic-chas's phone

Argie and all the fast stuff disappeared from view but we were trying hard to hang on to Sloop John (who finally had us by 8 secs corr) and to stay in front of Animal. It must be said that Prime Suspect, Charlie Frize's Mills is one very quick 36 footer finishing just one corr minute behind the many windowed bus. Finishing at 12.30pm or so was fine because by the time we turned round and squirted back to Kip it was blowing up to 30kt and it could be said that we had raced in the best part of the day. Given the early finish, the prizegiving was completed in short order with bottles of Old Pulteney for the Race Officers and recycled wisecracks from Pete for the assembled audience. Finally we should congratulate David and Ian Kent for Boat of the Weekend namely their appropriately named Drookit - one of those 2 hull thingmies. Many thanks to Alan Henderson for the pics. More photos and full results on LSC website

We won't be around for the midweek stuff, much as being slagged off by John Highcock is entertaining but hope to be back down for the 2 handed next weekend. Maybe see you there.