RS200 Scottish Travellers at Largs Sailing club

With the weatherman changing his mind all week, he finally settled on predicting a reasonable southerly F2-3 gradually dropping through the day for the Largs RS200 Scottish Traveller. However, this didn't materialise and the 11 strong fleet floated out a South(ish) F1... This has been a season of extremes for the 200 Scottish tour and today seemed like no exception!

After floating around on the jellyfish filled Largs channel for around 30 mins, a puff of breeze came through and everyone got excited that the forecast might materialise. The race officer quickly set a course, but before any racing could get underway the breeze was gone again... and it was back to lounging around. After an hour the breeze decided to fill in a bit from the north; cue a frantic course re-arrange whilst the wind settled to a F1 from the NW. This left a port biased line that allowed the fleet to get started cleanly and away (albeit slowly) to the first mark. Unfortunately, after the fleet had rounded the first mark, the wind decided to shut off again. After waiting a few minutes to see if it was just a lull, the race officer canned it as the wind was now filling in again from the south! Race Officer's nightmare...

So the course was flipped again and the fleet lined up again for another start. This time it was the committee end that was favoured and the fleet danced around vying for pole position. Kim Ross and Doug Guthrie managed to win the start right at the committee boat but just couldn't hold the fleet off the line. Roger Carter and Rachael Cooke managed to squeeze out from underneath them, but it was Stuart Teasdale and his Facebook sourced local crew Ashly Martin that managed to pull away from underneath both Kim/Doug and Roger/Rachael as the fleet raced upwind. A few boats decided to try their luck tacking out towards the middle of the channel looking for more breeze, but it seemed the tide was too much on the right of the course and it was Stuart/Ashly who rounded first closely followed by Willie and Dom Todd, Roger/Rachael and Ben Wilcox and Rachel Offer.

The majority of the fleet gybed off early after rounding the mark, with the start-finish gate officially a race hazard downwind, some of the boats who didn't gybe early enough found themselves having to head up around it... Roger and Rachael had a good downwind after an early gybe to put the pressure on Stuart/Ashly who managed to hold on to their lead at the leeward mark. The breeze begun to look a bit ropey during the next upwind and although this allowed Stuart/Ashly and Roger/Rachael to extend their lead at first, it also allowed Willie/Dom and Ben/Rachel to catch right back up again by the windward mark! The next downwind saw Willie/Dom try their luck down the other side of the start-finish gate, but the tidal side of course seemed to pay and Roger/Rachael kept the pressure on Stuart/Ashly enough to manage to squeeze ahead at the leeward mark. The final lap saw Stuart/Ashly sneak straight back ahead of Roger/Rachael by the windward mark, and with some solid sailing down the final run saw them leading as they rounded the last mark. With the course a bit one sided Roger/Rachael tacked off early to head towards the pin end of the finish, Stuart/Ashly quickly followed suit and it was a drag race to the finish which was eventually (nothing happens quickly in a F1...) won by Roger/Rachael. Not far behind was Willie/Dom in 3rd and Ben/Rachel in 4th.

The fleet hung around, hoping that another race may be possible, but lack of time and wind decided this not to be and as the last boats in the other fleets were finished it was time to call it a day.

Many Thanks to Largs Sailing Club for hosting a slick one day event and Many Thanks to the Race Team for managing to get one race completed in what were certainly challenging conditions!

Roll on Dalgety Bay on the 5th/6th September for the next instalment of the RS200 Scottish Tour. With a location between the SW and NE fleets a large turnout is hoped for and given the bizarre weather of the season so far, it'll surely be a sunny F3-4 all weekend.

Overall Results: