Moving on from the Scottish Series

Battle of Largs to take place at this weekend's Old Pulteney Scottish IRC Championship

It won’t be the Vikings this time, but the Battle of Largs is set to be played out this weekend by almost 35 top racing yachts from Scotland and further afield.

The prize? No less than honour and the chance to be crowned Old Pulteney Scottish IRC Champion. The competition? Stiff. The teams? Scotland’s top racing yachts, fresh from a tough weekend of fighting the fight at Scottish Series in Tarbert; some with scores to settle.

These campaigners will all assemble at Largs Yacht Haven tomorrow (Saturday June 6) for the two-day Old Pulteney IRC Scottish Championship, organised by Mudhook Yacht Club and sponsored by Old Pulteney – the Genuine Maritime Malt is also behind the sponsorship for the forthcoming Round-The-Island Race on 20 June, as well as the Royal Dartmouth Regatta on 27-29 August .

Entries are up on last year, bucking many a regatta trend, and the line up includes a number of crews which have ventured from as far afield as Northern Ireland, Yorkshire, Scotland’s east coast, North Yorkshire and the Lake District.

It may be small, but the ‘big boat’ IRC 1 class, with five entries, is wide open. Seasoned campaigners like Geoff Howison in BH41 Local Hero, Jonathon Anderson and crew aboard Beneteau 47.7 Playing FTSE and Allan Hogg’s King 40 Argie Bargie could all win it.

And the forecast moderate northerly breeze is unlikely to help make matters any clearer - all bets are off.

But, the race committee could elect to throw a spanner in the works by combining this fleet with the larger IRC2 entry, as happened last year, thereby enriching the melting pot, but probably making life much harder for the larger boats.

Assuming IRC2 remains as it is, the Harris lads on Sydney 36 Tanit, as defending champion, must fancy their chances, but they really will have to fight for it, particularly with Salamander XX, John Corson’s Corby 33, which lost out in last year’s scrap by a mere half point.

Add into that mix the Jeffrey/Scutt partnership on board First 36.7 Carmen II, Kevin Aitken’s Animal, an Elan 380, and the local knowledge of the Thomson brothers on Swan 40 Sloop John T, and you have yourself a pitched battle.

The biggest class, by some distance – boasting around half the overall fleet – is IRC3 and the big favourite must be niJinsky, the J/92S of Robert Yates, which picked up top spot at Scottish Series in IRC4 just two weeks ago. He will not, however, have it all his own way with a pack of talented skippers ready to push him to the limit.

Not least of these are Clyde sailmaker Murray Caldwell at the helm of his Sigma 33 Kapeesh, Whitby’s John Allen in X-302 Antix and Clyde Cruising Club’s Commodore Howard Morrison at the helm of Sigma 38 Enigma.