Dalgety Bay Sailing Club Annual Regatta

Dalgety Bay hosted their annual regatta this year at the later date in September as compared to the historical May regatta.

The other big change to this regatta was the addition of a Novice/Beginners separate fleet as well as the usual Main fleet regatta. The Novice fleet were given there own course area, committee boat and race management team to ensure there was no mixing up with the main regatta fleet.

The conditions were excellent with around 10+ knots on Saturday and a stronger 15+ knots on Sunday.

Novice fleet

The Novice fleet turned out to be the biggest single fleet of the weekend with 24 boats taking part. How they could sail in amongst all the Haribo sweets being thrown from support boats is beyond me but they all sailed well to produce some very tight results. The fleet was made up of a wide range of boats from Opi’s to lasers with a couple of Mirrors thrown in. There was also coaching on and off the water available for the fleet from DBSC member Ian Baillie & Emma Wilkie who was provided (funded) by RYAS.

The racing was dominated by a very consistent Alistair Higgins from DBSC sailing his Optimist GBR 5454 who scored four 1st’s and one 3rd. I think he will be eyeing up the main fleet next year with that performance. 2nd overall was Ruaridh Stevenson sailing his Topper and 3rd was Fiona Greer sailing her Laser radial. Well done to everyone who took part and this shows great potential for racing for the future.

Main Fleet

In the main fleet it was the Scottish championships for the Europe and travelers for the RS200. 15 Europe’s turned up for the event and this was the largest fleet of Europe’s seen in Scotland for quite some time. Some boats came from far a field including Chew Valley Lake SC for the event. The Europe results were dominated by Gareth Williams from Leigh and Lowton SC who scored five 1st’s and one 2nd. 2nd overall was local sailor Bess Homer and 3rd was Gordon McGeorge from Largo Bay sailing club. It was a very competitive fleet with the odd bumps and scrapes to show for it.

In the RS200’s the final top 3 places were only separated by one point with Ronnie and Torr Millar from Dalgety Bay SC winning the event on tie breaker but with the better result in the last race. 2nd overall went to Phil Smith and Naomi Smith from Bassenthwaite SC and 3rd overall went to Fiona Hall and JP McCaldin from Dalgety Bay SC.

Asymmetric Fleet

The asymmetric fleet had a wide range of asymmetric boats including Musto Skiffs, RS Vareo, RS100, 29er, Laser 2000 and of course Dalgety Bay regatta regular Paul Hignett from Loch Vennacher SC in his foiling Bladerider Moth.

Probably the most entertaining race for spectators was race 5 on Sunday where some pretty strong gusts went through and a lot of the fleet decided to check their slot gaskets mid race.

Paul Hignett dominated the regatta with fours 1st’s and a master class on how to sail his boat very very fast in some varied conditions. Paul lapped the whole fleet including all the Musto Skiffs in race 1.

After racing Ian Renilson decided to have a go of the Moth and I heard he took to it very quickly and soon the rescue boat could not keep up with him!

Second place went to Ian Renilson from Dalgety Bay SC in his Musto Skiff who pushed Paul all the way and scored two 2 1st’s but finished 2 point behind in the end. 3rd place went to Gavin Homer from Dalgety Bay SC also in a Musto skiff.

Handicap Fleet

The handicap fleet was mainly made up of Lasers with a Laser 2 and a national 12 thrown in. The event was won convincingly by Brian Greer from Dalgety Bay SC. Second went to John Mucklow from Dalgety Bay SC also in a Laser (for the first time in years!) and third went to Tim Jones from Cramond BC in a Laser 2.

On the Saturday night there was entertainment from the 18 piece Inverkeithing Community Big Band. It was an amazing thing to have in the club house and went down very well with everyone there.

Overall the event showed that this new refreshing format was a great way for more people to get exposure to the open regatta experience. The other interesting point is that 58% of competitors were DBSC members showing the benefit of the regatta to home members as well as visitors. Massive thanks goes to all the organisers on and off the shore (too many to mention) who made the time to make a great weekend for all and turned races round in an amazingly efficient way.