We had a great turnout of 20 boats for the third in this years Winter Series for the IOM, including 5 visitors and a new Junior member in his first time out competing with a Widget.
The sun was out and although the breeze was forecast to be SSE, it was generally SE or even ESE at times, with a strength that was mid to top end A rig. Although it did die back later in the afternoon, it was still sufficient to give close racing throughout the fleet. Racing got underway at 12:00 after Robbie Mac had donned the waders and moved the marks slightly to align with the breeze and cope with the fleet size.
Everyone seemed to be keen, in fact too keen to get started and so we began the day with two general recalls before we got away on the third attenpt with just 3 boats recalled. Brad Gibson set out his stall for the day by winning race 1 with Peter Baldwin in second and Rob Walsh in third. Graham Elliott was awarded Redress having been taken out by a running boat on his final approach to the finish. This fired him up for race 2, which he won, with Rob second this time and Brad third. Come Race 3, Brad resumed his winning ways, with Simon Fairman in his new Alioth V3 taking second and Brian Summers in his self designed Buzz 6.
Race 4 was another win for Brad, with Graham second and John Brierley getting his setup sorted to take third. Race 5 was time for Rob to pick up his first win over Brad in second and then John B third again. Brad reversed the results with Rob in Race 6 with Paul Plested taking a well deserved third. So the end of the first session and a break for some lunch and refreshments. It was also useful for the finish team to have a break as the finishers were coming in thick and fast at times as racing was so close for the majority of the fleet.
After the welcome break, Rob picked up another win from Brad in second and Graham in third. Martin Roberts then seemed to pick up a gear and won race 8, with Brad in second again and Rob third. Brad then managed another win in Race 9 with Martin second and Rob third. Graham was quietly plugging away near the top bunch and picking up a couple of fourths before finishing on the podium for the final 3 races. These final race wins were shared between Rob (2) and Brad (1) with Graham or Martin usually filling the podium spots. This however still left Brad as the clear winner, followed by Rob in second and then Graham quite a few points adrift of Rob and Martin snapping at his heels in fourth after a great second session.
There were some notable performances throughout the fleet with Paul Plested picking up fifth with some excellent results having only had an IOM for a few months and Simon Fairman going well in his V3 Alioth on it first outing having been measured earlier in the day. Grahm Birkett picked up some good results in his Widget with a fourth and fifth. Visitors Colin McGinnis and Brian Summers both had some decent results with Colin just getting the upper hand placing ahead of Brian on countback. Finally, a great first day of competitive IOM sailing for Noah Mcintosh including a fifteenth in the final race with four boats behind him.
Thanks go to the race team of David Williams, Neil Westbrook and scorer Judith. Photos above from Phyl Fanning, a good number of other ones are available in our Gallery here.
Also a reminder that there will be another IOM Winter Series event next week (8/2/25) when event #2 which was called off due to ice on the lake will be re-run.
