The joys of coarse racing

A record year for Loch Broom SC and its Flying Fifteens

This season I have mostly been sailing a classic yacht, which is hardly surprising. What did you expect; that I’d been seduced to the dark side, and have been having more fun that I can remember on a jetski?

Contrary to many people’s memories of 2021, ours will mostly be positive. It helps living beyond reach – almost but not, alas, totally – of the nasty, little spiky thing we’ve all been worried about.

Truth is the old (Royal, because decisions used to be all taken in the Royal Hotel until Covid 19) Loch Broom Sailing Club had a bumper year, with 26 races sailed, something of a record, as well as a regatta and a trophy race in memory of a lost member.

Now the old LBSC is not the kind of club to have starting lines set at right angles to the wind, or even marks that lie anywhere near upwind. Some are simply described before the five-minute gun in terms of “the yellow creel buoy to the west of Carl’s mooring”, in answer to a shout of: “where’s the first mark”?