Annandale

13th & 14th April

A select group of national 12 sailors arrived at Annandale for the first of the Scottish Area series. Only a couple of hours earlier the Loch had been like a mill pond. But by the time the intrepid 12 sailors set sail the wind had increased to a respectable 12-15 knots with the odd gust of 26 knots going through.

Angus Beyts sailing a Feeling Foolish for the first time and sporting a brand-new foiling rudder with Local crew Trudie Mitchell was soon feeling rather foolish with two capsizes before the start of the first race and many more after it. Soon exhaustion kicked in and was forced to limp home for an early tea without finishing a race. Vintage sailors Brian Herring and Ros Stevenson decided discretion was the better part of valour and remained firmly on dry ground.  It was left to Tim Hampshire and Patrick Hamilton to fight it out. There was a strong Hampshire family presence as Tim was crewed by his daughter Emma and Patrick was crewed by Tim’s son Christopher. Tim sailing Crusader 88 3330 could not match the off wind speed of Patrick’s Big Issue and a dip or two didn’t help and Patrick won all three races despite using the National 12 age related handicaps.

After racing was finished for the day National 12 sailors joined with the GP 14 sailors for a meal in a local pub. After which Patrick and Angus went on a pub crawl of all the pubs in Lochmaben. As there are only 3 pubs in Lochmaben this was a rather short lived pub crawl and both were able to get back to the club in a reasonable state.

Sunday dawned to another mill pond but by the time the sailors set forth the wind had risen to similar levels of the previous day. Once again Brian and Ros decided to stay on dry land. Angus and Trudie did venture out and managed considerable better than the day before finishing all three races firmly in last place but with only one capsize. Patrick remained in control winning all three races.

As there were so few boats between the GP 14s and the National 12s it was decided that they would race against each other on handicap. Unfortunately somebody who has already felt foolish this weekend managed to lose the result before he got home so those results can’t be posted here!