Lots of Argie Bargie

Allan Hogg's King 40 claims Old Pulteney Scottish IRC Championship

In their brand new Archambault 31 A Neet Djinn, Nick and Miles Stratton have sailed to victory in the Old Pulteney Scottish IRC Championship organised by Mudhook Yacht Club.

The father and son pairing from Rhu near Helensburgh on the Clyde pulled off an emphatic win at the head of IRC3, with four bullets and a discard of a second. Doubly impressive, as the Largs-based event was only the second regatta outing for the brand new boat and was, in fact, the first time the seven-strong team had sailed together.

“Really pleased,” said Nick Stratton. “Obviously Miles and I have sailed together before, but this was a newly assembled crew, which really came together during this regatta and it all went well for us.”

Nick’s son Miles continued: “This is definitely a better experience than our first outing at Scottish Series when we damaged the mast and had to pull out. It was a tough class and probably closer than the results suggest. In race one on Sunday, first to third places across the water were separated by only three seconds and the handicaps were really tight. She’s really supposed to be a good light air boat, but it turns out she’s pretty good in the really windy stuff, too, as we proved on Saturday.”

So, in the end, it really was a regatta of two halves - Saturday blew the cobwebs and pretty much everything else off the 35-strong fleet, while Sunday, with shifty light airs, allowed participants the opportunity to do a little more than just survive.

Also producing a starring performance at the event, was John Corson’s Corby 33 Salamander XX - she, too, posted a scoreline of four bullets, but the discard of a fifth for team Salamander was ultimately all that lay between them and the overall championship. Fairly heart-breaking, perhaps, for the crew which, last year missed out on the overall trophy by a mere half point, after a similarly stellar performance.

Corson and crew, like the Djinn team, however, really did sail away with the competition with a clean sweep total of just four points, leaving Ian and Graham Thomson’s Sloop John T on eight points to take second place.

The big boats in IRC1, however, had to get used to a weekend of real ups and downs. Competition really was wide open, with Allan Hogg’s Argie Bargie, a King 40, going head to head with Charlie Frize and his Mills 36 Prime Suspect, as well as the Bramall/Kelly pairing on Mumm 36 Absolutely 2 from Port Edgar near Edinburgh.

Frize led the way at the end of Saturday’s racing by a single point from team Argie, but the winners of IRC1 at Scottish Series were clearly not content to sit on their laurels and watch victory walk away from them.

And with Sunday’s results also nip and tuck - both yachts took a first and a fourth - it came down to a single point after discard, with Hogg and crew ultimately doing just enough to pull it off.

Frize, however, who lives in Glasgow and sails from Rhu, was philosophical about it all and said: “We’ve had a really good weekend - they’ve been difficult conditions no matter which day you look at it, but good courses. In the end it probably came down to two mistakes on our part, both that we were in the wrong place for two windshifts when they came - if you got them, you were home and dry.

“But we didn’t break anything on the boat - though one crew member did injure his index finger quite badly - and we know the boat goes well.”

And in IRC4, there were also plenty of boats in the hunt, in a very hard fought class.

In the end, though, the Angus/Tear/Thomson crew on Hustler SJ30 Misjif, did enough to hold the challenges of John Allen’s Antix and John Kent in Farr E Nuff at bay.

Results
Old Pulteney Scottish IRC Championship, Largs:

IRC1 – 1 Argie Bargie (A Hogg) 7, 2 Prime Suspect (C Frize) 8, 3 Absolutely 2 (Bramall/Kelly) 10;
IRC2 – 1 Salamander XX (J Corson) 4, 2 Sloop John T (I&G Thomson) 8, 3 Animal (K&D Aitken) 13
IRC3 – 1 A Neet Djinn (N&M Stratton) 4, 2 niJinsky (R Yates) 11, 3 Enigma (H Morrison) 12
IRC4 – 1 Misjif (Angus/Tear/Thomson) 8, 2 Antix (J Allen) 10.5, 3 Farr E Nuff (J Kent) 11.5.