Burwain Open Meeting  

Black Sheep wins at Burwain

Unfortunately due to a clash with the vintage championships the initial date for the Burwain open had to be reorganised and lead to a some what reduced field so the fleet joined in with Burwain’s summer regatta.

Angus when he arrived was somewhat surprised to find he was the only visiting 12, He was even more surprised to find he was the only visiting boat! There were more surprises in store for Angus as he had brought along his double floored Pipedream which he had spent the preceding week fitting a foiling rudder, Sadly what fitted in Auchterarder did not appear to fit at Burwain and it took all of the first race and mush drilling of holes before the rudder eventually fitted. This was doubly disappointing as the first race was by far the worst race for local man Patrick and so went Angus’s best chance of beating Patrick.

The wind was rather light and fluky, and there was probably no advantage to be gained by having a foiling rudder but it was fitted now!

Angus was out to the line in plenty of time for the 2nd race and lined himself up for a near perfect start only for a raft of K1’s to drift across the line early blocking the line for the O.D. causing a general recall. Apparently this is a well known local hazard but Angus was too busy fitting his rudder to attend the briefing, the second start got away cleanly but typically Angus was sailing in the wrong direction when the start went allowing Patrick to get a clear lead which Angus was never able to make up.

As Angus worked his way through the fleet he slowly became aware of a strange fact, each time he overtook a boat that boat would retire, there seemed some sinister plot to keep the guest in last place! This carried on in the last race, where again Angus managed to get a terrible start (This time unaided by K1’s) but held grimly on to second place, despite the fact that the Reservoir was reaching record low levels as much of it was draining into Angus’s buoyancy tanks.

After sailing was finished there was an excellent barbeque, far better than the sailing with a very good vegetarian and vegan choice followed by a rather bizarre game of family fortunes which was probably improved by the quantity of quality beer available. Patrick and Angus decided to sample as much of the beer as possible and it was decided that Blacksheep was a clear winner.