In good breeze, on the water Race Officer Iain MacGillivray was able to choose one of the longer courses. It began with a leg to windward to B, off Silvers. The two usual starting lines, from buoys Y or Z to a mast on the shore, are heavily biassed when wind is from the west. On an earlier occasion, the then Race Officer Eric Boinard resolved this by specifying a starting line between the two buoys. Iain used the Boinard start this day.
Eric, owner of Zephyrus, has been very ill. He is making good progress and the Class looks forward to seeing him on his eponymous starting line soon.
Even with a Boinard start, the line was not truly square to the wind. Teal read it wrong and started at the unfavoured end. Catriona avoided being squeezed out by Thalia and had pole position, Dione just behind.
Dione was unable to climb into clear air and so tacked up the loch. Catriona covered and it became clear wind was less where the two were sailing. Catriona went back to join the rest. Notwithstanding her sailing in the strongest of the adverse tide she crossed ahead. Dione stuck at it and sailed into oblivion.
Thalia was strong and rounded B for the downwind leg to the northernmost mark on the Shandon shore ahead of Teal. At the end of the run, Teal contrived an inside overlap at the mark to drop Thalia behind. She then found a superb lift in the middle of the loch to move into first on a windward leg to Clynder. She set off to B again at the start of the shorter second round with a comfortable lead. A shift in the wind meant this was now a fetch, spinnakers were set towards the end of it. Teal found an especially discrete area of little wind. Catriona was able to pass close by to leeward. A charging Thalia stayed high and could not do the same.
Meanwhile, the following pack of Thia, Dione, Hermes and Luna found themselves in lightening air and were not in the same race.
1 Catriona, 2 Teal, 3 Thalia, 4 Thia, 5 Luna. Hermes and Dione DNF.
President: