Sail Caledonia 2014

[Andy Dingle]

Thanks Jonathan..  for the pictures and your company for the week. It truly was a memorable time.
The picture of 'Psalter's' centreboard was quite some accomplishment as it required waiting for a suitable gust to get the gunn'ls suitably buried enough for Jonathan to lean over the windward side  to get the picture..  Why? You may well ask. We were having a conversation about the peat staining the water and the white centreboard demonstrated this very well.. and it was a long race... and we had run out of tea and hobnobs.... !

What hasn't been mentioned yet, it appears, is the congratulations to Matthew and Andrew in (BR20) 'Gladys' for winning the Swallow Boats trophy this year. A magnificent effort on their part with some excellent sailing. In fact well done to all the Swallow Boat crews up there for some fantastic sailing (and rowing!). I think we certainly left an impression!

Morbihan next year?

Andy

[Graham W]

Congratulations to Matthew and Andrew on Gladys, showing us just what can be done without modifications of any sort, unless you count a twisted mast and slightly loose tabernacle!  If the wind blew, she was uncatchable and it was a memorable sight to see her disappearing into the far distance, with a horizontal Matthew cantilevered over the gunwales. The final detailed results have not been published yet but I suspect that Gladys's score was very close to that of overall winner Elsie, a Caledonian Yawl that also won in 2012.

For those that are interested, there will also be several galleries of pictures posted on the Sail Caledonia website in due course.

[Jonathan Stuart]

I want to echo Graham's comments - Matthew and Andrew out-sailed us all and were generally uncatchable. It will be interesting to see the final scores; I hope Gladys's time for race 2 was reinstated as promised because that must have accounted for about 4 places/points!

I took a bit of video of Rob's BC23 sailing up Loch Ness in Wednesday's race and here it is:

http://youtu.be/IXkXftlr30o

[Matthew P]

Sail Caledonia was great fun. The best things about the week were the good-natured company, the laughs, the romantic Highland atmosphere (including pipe music) and the food.  The racing was the icing on the cake.  I think the general standard of singing "mud-mud, glorious mud" and Andrew's puns could be improved though.  And I'll stay off the poetry next time.

We very much appreciate the other Bayraider crews' kind comments and sporting behavior, given the way Gladys came from bottom-up 2 years ago (so to speak) due to Andrew's helming world-championship dinghy expertise and nothing to do with my trans-Windermere experience. The spirit of co-operation between races was unmatched and took nothing away from the competitiveness during races, which is as it should be.

I particularly appreciate Graham's contribution to the event, he must have spent some considerable personal time quietly on administrative work as treasurer as well as being a generous friend and competitor during the event itself. 

I've posted some snapshots on the gallery.  If any of them are too personal for anyone's comfort I will of course remove them! And I'll also stick a video on Youtube when I've edited out the very shaky bits and 20min views of the inside of a halyard bag.

Matthew

BR20 Gladys

[Rob Johnstone]

I echo Matthew's remarks about the work put in by Graham (and the other members of the committee and their helpers) to make the whole event work extremely well and also about the spirit of help and friendliness amongst the participants, desipte lots of shouts of "starboard" during the races! And thanks, Johnathan, for the video clip of Vagabond, taken when we were in full sail!

[Graham W]

John Mac's photos are now up http://broombank.phanfare.com/6572043

[Rob Johnstone]

Just before we close on this subject (and I see that Sail Caledonia 2015 already has its' own thread, I attach a track taken from my GPS of the taking that went on up the first half of Loch Ness. Whilst the more keen members of SC2014 (including most of the Swallow contingent) got up at first sparrow f**t to compete in the Loch Ness challenge, the more gentlemanly amongst us (eg lazier) awoke normally to sail half the distance. Unlike the first batch, we found quite a bit of wind (going the wrong way) and a taking challenge ensued between Psalter (BC) and Vagabond. Initially Vagabond was in the lead (helped by the fact that Psalter crossed the start line too early) and was surging ahead. The wind increased and Vagabond started to become difficult to keep on a steady course, so I took in a reef. It was thought at the end of the race that it was this (coupled with some energetic leaning out by Johnathan) that enabled Psalter to take the lead and win by a fair margin. The track reveals something else -  the data shows that the SOG over AB and CD was the same (5kn) but I clearly had a"Senior Moment" shortly after wards!

[Jonathan Stuart]

FYI, all the results are now on the Sail Caledonia website:

http://www.sailcaledonia.org/page40.html

I noticed there is a mistake in some of the placings for race 4 and have let John McP know about that.

The results for class 4 (where most Swallow Boats were entered) are:

1. Gladys
2. Turaco III
3. Psalter
4. Askari
5. Skylark
6. Gobhlan-G

The overall results aren't published but totting up the scores it was close between Elsie (the overall winner) and Gladys, with (I think) 40 and 46 points respectively.

[Graham W]

Race positions can be calculated in all sorts of different ways but allowing for the fact that Elsie didn't take part in the Loch Ness Challenge, Gladys was probably fastest from sea to shining sea, with Turaco second fastest. Once again, rowing prowess played an important part in the majority of races - even several of the sailing ones!  If they were still around,  I'm sure that the ancient Vikings would be impressed with how well BayRaiders perform.