Sunday saw the first special event of Pentland Firth Yacht Club's sailing calendar for 2022, taking the form of a pursuit race.
In the normal races run by the club, all boats start off together and their times to complete the course are recorded – this allows the eventual race winner to be calculated by allowing for the different boats sailed by a handicap system.
In the pursuit race, the slower boat starts off first, followed by the progressively faster ones, the starting intervals being calculated so that all boats should finish together at the end of the predetermined race time.
A race time of 25 minutes was selected and start times varied by up to six minutes. A total of three such races were run, meaning that all was not lost if a sailor had a bad race early on.
For the first race there were four boats. The slowest and first to start was the Mirror with Donald McKenzie and Thomas McAlonan on board. Second was the Topper of Ian Grant, third the Laser 4.7 of Marjory Lord and finally the Laser of Martin Lord.
For the second race the four sailors were joined by Ian and Lily Carlisle in their Bosun. The wind dropped during the race and the Carlisle pairing showed their skills in the fickle conditions to come up with a win with Martin Lord second, Marjory Lord third, Donald and Thomas fourth and Ian Grant bringing up the rear.
This meant the overall result would depend on the third and final race. The wind picked up for this and Marjory Lord quickly made her way past the boats starting before her and led to the finish.
Martin was again second with Ian Grant third, the Carlisle pairing fourth and this time Donald and Thomas having to settle for last place. This meant it was Marjory who won the day and the Phimster Pursuit Cup.
The club is always looking for new members. Anyone with an interest in sailing, or who would like to become involved, should email pentlandfirthyc@gmail.com
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