IOM Southern Tasmanian Championship

We had eight sailors along today for the 2025 installment of the Southern Tasmanian Championship. Unfortunately the field was reduced fue to some illnesses, but the small field was keen to make the most of the conditions today.

An initial briefing by Kyle, who took on PRO duties today laid out the standards required for the day. Particular emphasis on sportsmanship and sailing amongst others in a way that you would like others to sail against you. The grey area between sailing in a certain way "because you can" and sailing in a sportsmanlike manner clearly explained as well as the expectations for the day.

On that note, the conduct of the skippers on the courses was very good, with the PRO not having to make calls for buoy contacts etc and sailors doing their penalties as expected without being called for it - the example to set for the sport.

Unfortunately, the conditions had other ideas for us today and gave us a pretty dire time. Squalls ranging up to around 30 knots, driving rain at times and some pretty unfavourable directions also, but we did manage to get 5 races in prior to an early lunch break, which was called after a wind direction change and onset of some large chunks of weed.

By this stage, Lisa had broken out to a substantial lead, but there were four others in the hunt for the two other podium positions.

To add to the unfortunate conditions today, we lost both John Short and Marcus Inches at lunch with some rigging and electrical issues, and Rod decided to not sail after lunch with the weed about.

We got the first race in after lunch (race 6) and the weed worsened on us, so a call of skippers wishes to continue at that point was given, and a unanimous call was made to abandon th esailing for the day at race 6.

Lisa came out a convincing winner of the Southern Tasmanian Championship on just 7 points.

Ray took out second place today on 16 points and Stuart rounded out the top three on 18 points.

Not the best of conditions by any stretch with the rain, wind and weed today, but hopefully our return to Montrose in October will yield much better conditions with the bridge construction then finished and return to normal flows (hopefully) in the Derwent.
Coming up:

• Wednesday: IOM Mid Week Handicap at the dam, starting at 11am.
  
• Next Sunday: RM Scratch - at the dam, button press at 10am