Scottish Solo Championships at Largo Bay Sailing Club
by Alasdair Sneddon 13 Jun 2005 09:23 BST
11-12 June 2005
The start of race 2 at the Scottish Solo championships © Alasdair Sneddon
Twenty one Solos gathered at Largo Bay Sailing Club on June 11th for the Scottish National Championship, an event that was to be sailed in similar waters to the UK Nationals in North Berwick later in the year.
Despite the flat calm presented first thing in the morning the organisers were confident of a good steady south westerly (if only because the forecasts were for north easterlies) and this duly started to fill in right on cue coming up to about force 2 by the start of racing.
Race Officer Jim Blyth organised the requested mile long beat and the racing started exactly on time with only one early starter. Largo Bay’s Kevan Gibb was into an early lead immediately and using his familiarity with the sea conditions drew out a good cushion over Colin Newton (Staunton Harold SC) and Ian McLean (Royal Forth).
Although the breeze was slight, the water was particularly lumpy and this is always a difficult combination to master in coastal waters so it took Andy Davis (Bartley SC) a couple of laps to get acclimatised but when he did he snatched the next two first places from Gibb leading from the start over progressively shortened courses leaving the jostling to those further back.
Chris Brown (RYA) had a relatively inauspiciously sixth place in the first race and improved to take a third in the last race of the day to give himself a useful springboard for the Sunday activity.
Sunday morning presented a completely different set of conditions and problems. The Largo Bay SC team of Race Committee and Safety boats saw the light, flighty northerly airs and knew they were in for a difficult day and Jim Blyth had to contend with wind shifts of 180 degrees and strength variations from Force 0 to Force 5, sometimes on the same leg.
The flat water brought different players to the fore with Jim Sinclair (East Lothian YC) occupying the pole position on a couple of occasions only to have it snatched away by Chris Brown and Colin Newton on some early downwind legs with Gibb and Micky Todd (Largo Bay SC) forced to the last third of the fleet.
The weather had not finished yet as halfway through a decidedly sedate Race 4 a 20 knot squall appeared from the north passing through the fleet, removed a few hats, caused a couple of capsizes and rearranged the places fairly radically. The chief beneficiaries were Todd and Gibb moving from relative obscurity to third and fourth and Mark Sherwen (Rudyard Lake SC) taking a useful sixth after a disappointing Saturday.
Chris Brown proved he could handle himself in these conditions by claiming an excellent first place in Race 4 before demonstrating mastery of the drifter by also wining Race 5, on both occasions getting the better of Andy Davis and Colin Newton.
Coming into the last race of the weekend any one of six boats could have taken the championship although this was not always in the sailors’ own hands. With very little wind on offer it looked as though Chris Brown, who led initially, had relinquished the initiative to Colin Newton who gave a mastery display of patient light wind sailing. Brown tried to get away from the pack on the second reach by sailing deeper looking for more wind and seemed to be at a disadvantage compared to Davis and Newton at the Leeward mark. However, he emerged from the pack in a good second place at the start of the second windward leg and must have been disappointed to see Davis claim third over Sherwen as the front few boats found some clean air and opened out a lead over the others who were still getting in each others way at the leeward mark. A little puff of wind at this stage confirmed the order of the final race with Davis’s third place being good enough to claim the Championship forcing Brown into second.
Overall Results:
1st 4590 Andy Davis (Bartley SC) 10pts
2nd 4600 Chris Brown (RYA) 12pts
3rd 4336 Colin Newton (Staunton Harold SC) 12pts
4th 4517 Kevan Gibb (Largo Bay SC) 16pts
5th 3817 Ian McLean (Royal Forth YC) 26pts