Many thanks to Sandy for providing the following account:
A few sailors had expressed an interest in reviving the yacht racing that we used to hold regularly in the first 20 years of FWSC. To get started again and gauge the actual interest 2 dates were set in August and September for some racing.
The first race took place on Sunday 10th August. The weather conditions looked very good for racing with a westerly wind of about 12 mph. We still have some good racing marks which we have also used for skiff racing and Peter Reid offered to lay these marks from his boat “Zest” and act as committee boat aided by Jim Addison. A triangular course was set of about 1 mile. The race consisted of twice round this course with an additional “sausage” leg to give a distance of about 2.5 miles.
The boats taking part were Dignity, Sea Swallow, Bacchus, Cara, Scotia, Socair and Mango.
As with most yacht racing the first leg was upwind and this proved tricky for some who hadn’t raced recently. Dignity and Sea Swallow got off to a good start, but others took a while to get across the start line. The race was well underway when a call came on the VHF radio that Mango had capsized! This may sound alarming in a yacht race, but Mango is actually a dinghy not a yacht, and capsizing is quite common although the Wayfairer is generally more stable than many sailing dinghies. On hearing the call on the VHF radio, Peter and Jim in the committee boat, Zest, hurried over to assist the stricken vessel. Tim, the skipper of Mango, has experience of righting capsized dinghies and was able to get her upright again. Zest got Tim and Iain safely on board and towed Mango back to harbour. This meant the committee boat was unable to take race finish times and boats were asked to record their own finish times which were as follows:-
Dignity 31 minutes
Sea Swallow 40 minutes
Bacchus 70 minutes
Cara 76 minutes
Scotia, Socair and Mango were unable to complete the course.
Congratulations to Dignity who showed us how it should be done. We are looking forward to the next race on 21st September when a less challenging start direction is planned.
