IOM Mid Week Handicap

Today the fleet was greeted by a blustery wind which frequently swirled from Northerly to South-Westerly and gusted between 0 and 25 knots. The choice of B rig was universal and made for good racing.

Rob Cooney returned to the club today after a break of about 18 months. Welcome back Rob.

It was great to see that many skippers were keen and organised to get some casual scratch racing going at 10:00 before the handicap event. These races are deliberately very short so that plenty of races can be held and they provide skippers with invaluable experience at starting in a fleet situation.

The course set for the handicap racing was initially an up-wind beat to buoy 8 followed by a figure-8 around the top four buoys then down to a leeward gate before heading to the finish. After lunch the wind was tending more to the West and so a course involving buoy 9 was used. PRO duties were shared between myself, Mike Hickman and Andrew Wardrop who suffered some gear failure during the day.

Well done to Lisa Blackwood who consistently placed at the head of the fleet and took out the day. Lisa was just a single point ahead of Matt Grey with Wayne Berhens taking out third spot.

It is really pleasing scanning the results to see that even though many skippers succumbed to gear failure, every skipper had at least one race where they featured on the podium. Looking at result sheets from previous weeks this is not unusual. I believe that this is a sign of a handicap system that is working very well.

Next sailing is Sunday’s RM Scratch round 10:00 at Montrose. Next week our Wednesday handicap will be for DF 95’s
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 John Short