HD Sails Scottish Streaker Travellers at Aberdeen & Stonehaven YC and Loch Lomond SC

Scottish Streaker Travellers at the Aberdeen & Stonehaven YC Regatta © Rona Rose

The HD Sails Scottish Streaker travellers went to the Aberdeen and Stonehaven YC regatta on August 16th & 17th. Stonehaven gave us sun on both days, a decent hiking wind with small but useful waves on Saturday and a neap tide that had to be judged. Sunday had less wind but the dolphins turned up (obviously didn't read the NoR!).

Due to a late cancellation and the distance turnout was down. 4 races were held on Saturday. All were very close, especially race 2 when we didn't know the result as we were all so close.

Sunday started after a 1 hour postponement for the wind to appear. Paul Noble (ELYC) chose to follow shifts up the first beat and was ahead of David Parkin (ASYC) and Katie Masterton (St Mary's Loch SC) who both went hard right to beat the tide but had less wind. Paul tried the same tactic on the second beat but the tide had increased and Katie and David passed him.

The final race had David beating Katie. The racing was much closer than the results suggest. David scored 1, (2), 2, 1, 2,1, Katie (2), 1, 1, 2, 1, 2 with Paul in 3rd.

Loch Lomond SC on September 6th was a very successful event. We had 5 Streakers even without the usual suspects of Paul and Jim who were away. It was great to see 2 new faces both new to the fleet, David Kohn from Loch Venacher and Ian Collins from Prestwick, welcome to you both. Barney Proud (Craven SC) made the journey up from Yorkshire again to join Katie and myself.

The forecast was for 8mph gusting up to 18-20mph from the SE which is a fairly good direction for Loch Lomond. In fact it was more like 12-18mph. We shared a start with the 6 Solos and the club scored us as one handicap fleet which was unusual but easy to extract the Streaker results. All courses were an "outer" trapezoid.

Race one was delayed for a while and therefore was rather short as up to 5 races were planned. Katie went left up the first beat while everyone else went right. It paid for her reaching the windward mark with a 30m lead from David and Barney with no changes thereafter. There was then a long and cold delay of 45 minutes while the wind picked up, swung south then back again.

Race 2 was much closer at the windward mark with David P ahead from Katie who passed him down the run. Barney and Ian close behind. David K thought better than to continue. At the penultimate leeward mark David had to go to leeward of a capsized Solo giving Katie an apparently good lead. The final leg was a long close reach in a stronger wind allowing David to get on Katie's transom but not long enough to pass her. Barney held off Ian.

The third and final race was becoming a test of stamina. David led from the start, but the battle was behind between Katie and Barney. This was resolved when Katie rounded the leeward mark a bit wide allowing Barney through and into second which he held until the end. This meant Katie won with 1, 1, 3 from David with 2, 2, 1.

At the prize-giving David gave the HD caps to the top 5 in the HD Sails travellers series The overall results are subject to some working out by the class association but Jim Sinclair is the clear winner having won 3 of the 5 events having won all but 1 race, followed by Katie then David P.

This was the first season a full programme has been run in Scotland for the class and has attracted a lot of interest. Thanks to HD Sails for their support.

Scottish Streaker Travellers at Loch Lomond - photo © David Parkin