The annual Ellan Vannin Maritime Centre Round the Island Race took place recently. 

Manx Sailing and Cruising Club’s race took place in windy and occasionally not so windy conditions. 

The event was won by Game Changer, a Beneteau 40.7 boat from Bangor making its third appearance in the race, managing to get round in just over nine and a half hours.  

The boat took the Ramsey Town Cup for first place in the Division One IRC handicap, with Keith Lord’s A Crewed Interest second. 

‘Our boat is beautiful and took us round the corners,’ said winning skipper Shaun Douglas. ‘If we hadn’t hit a hole at Maughold we might have been on for the course record. That was a shame, but we were just glad to finish. 

‘It was 18-20 knots off the Point of Ayre and a bit bumpy. We were then reaching down to Peel and hit a bit of calm after the Calf. After Port St Mary we were flying with the S2 spinnaker, doing 8-9 knots.’ 

There was a big crew of nine, including some older members of the sailing fraternity causing them to call themselves the ‘Saga Tour’. 

‘It must have been my 30th time in the event and it was exhilarating,’ said David Edwards, a former commodore of Manx Sailing and Cruising Club. ‘I had to do two thirds of the spinnaker.’ 

The boats set off in brisk force 4-5 conditions at 11am on the Saturday morning and made rapid progress up the island’s northeast coast.  

A Crewed Interest, the A-35 which won the IoM Breweries Cup and which was overall winner on NHC handicap, made a superb start. 

‘We hit the startline at full speed with six seconds to spare,’ said skipper Lord who got back to Ramsey about 25 minutes after Game Changer. ‘It was tough going down the west coast. 

‘We had dolphins surfing in our wake around Jurby,’ said Mark Yell, who was crewing on A Crewed Interest. ‘We had rain chasing us all the way round too. 

‘But we kept pace with the other boats, and always had them in range. We took a big wave off Chicken Rock – it came out of nowhere, all over the front end of the boat. There was lots of teamwork with all of us taking shifts.’ 

TROPHIES WON BY CREWS FROM FAR AND WIDE

There were several different winners in various categories among the eight starters. 

‘It was great to see the trophies going far and wide – to Maryport, Bangor, Douglas and the MSCC’s own James Bishop, who took the Coronation Cup for Division Two NHC Handicaps, with Goodrum second,’ said Jerry Colman, current commodore of the MS&CC whose Sea-Pie of Cultra got back third on the water shortly before Kuba Szymanski’s 40.7 Polished Manx at 11pm. 

‘We had a really good crew. We were becalmed for an hour off Peel when the leaders slipped away. We put the spinnaker up by the Drinking Dragon and held it all the way to Maughold.  

‘It was cooler than I expected for July - it was windy up at the Point of Ayre. The crew did well in that and so did the old boat.’ 

It was Bishop’s first silverware in Cutlass of Man.

‘Elizabeth Callow is a superb crew. I wanted to retire but she insisted on continuing and I’m very grateful we finished. For the smaller yachts it was a beat all the way from the Point to the Calf.’ 

Goodrum and Skyfall also made it back in the small hours, but Cadenza unfortunately had to turn back halfway to the Point of Ayre after her mast spreaders broke. 

Thanks go to Ellan Vannin Maritime Centre for sponsoring the race, to race officers Andrew Dean and Yogi Quayle, and to Niamh Poole for organising the supper on Friday night and refreshments for the returning sailors on Saturday. 

JAMES PENN