Solway Yacht Club hosts the Not Round Rough Adventure at Kippford

Saturday saw one of the most unusual and fun filled of Solway Yacht Club’s races take place on the River Urr opposite Kippford.

The Round Rough Adventure usually involves Cadet sailors racing round Rough Island in the river estuary.

However, because the wind was a very fresh west northwesterly gusting to the upper 20 miles per hour, it was decided that this was too risky for the young sailors involved.

Instead it was renamed the The Not Round Rough Adventure. This type of race, invented some years ago by the race officer of the day, Willie Patterson, involves not only racing round a pre-arranged course but also picking up floating objects which have been placed into the water for collection.

These include coloured plastic balls and inflated plastic birds such as pelicans and flamingos. Apart from points given to each place in the race, each object pulled from the water earned extra points which contributed to the final score. Fancy dress with a nautical theme is also encouraged.

An ovoid shaped course of approximately 1.5km in length was laid out, starting at the Solway Yacht Club pier, sailing upstream towards Palnackie for 400m then downstream 900m to just opposite the Anchor Hotel then back to the Solway Yacht Club pier. Four dinghies including two Bahias, one Feva and one Pico took part, crewed by 10 Cadets and one instructor.

The course proved testing in the weather conditions of the day and each boat capsized at some point in the race. Great credit to all of the young crews who righted each one as it happened and continued onwards thereafter.

At the end of the day the winners were the crew of Bahia Charlotte, Toby Iglehart and Jack Johnstone along with James Bishop (instructor) with 205 points. Second came the