Results / Scottish Championships St Marys Loch SC - 23/08/2025

RS200 Rooster National Tour and Stewart Brewing Scottish Tour – Scottish Championships, St Mary’s Loch, 23/24 August

After surviving a 6am train and Brendan Lynch’s driving, we pulled into St Mary’s loch around 11am to see beautiful rolling hills with a stunning loch nestled in the middle, a stunning, mirror-like loch…

After some very leisurely rigging and some high-calibre games of rounders (won by the women’s team), we started to feel a little breeze building. Unfortunately though it was in the opposite direction to both the forecast and the clouds.

As Ellen Clark is incredibly selfless, she offered to sacrifice herself to the loch gods to bring us some steady wind and it worked! All systems go, everyone was changed and ready to launch, while Brendan was anxiously awaiting Ellen on the shore as she unfortunately kept on swimming further and further away. After a high speed RS200 rescue from Lily and Rory and a tactically poor start from the rest of the fleet (resulting in a general recall for the first race) Brendan and Ellen were finally ready to sail, and sail they did.

The wind was light but relatively consistent and the fleet were all sailing competitively. While for a moment it seemed like Anna Sturrock and Ewan Wilson might be giving BrEllen a run for their money, ultimately it played out as it always does, with a cracking win for BrEllen.

The wind picked up for the next race and everyone was cooking, however, on the second downwind a ginormous hole appeared near the leeward mark, ultimately splitting the fleet cleanly and resulting in a big gap between the sailors in 4th and the sailors in 5th onwards. The wind stayed pretty shifty after that and there was a ceilidh to get to, so the race committee called an end to the day.

The second day was also phenomenal, blue skies, and very little wind in the morning, allowing us time for a relaxed breakfast, before a really nice marginal planing wind came in from the north. I’m not sure what Ewan and Anna had for breakfast that morning, but they were on fire. With some lovely kite trim and non-stop hiking from Anna and they were awarded 2 bullets and the awe of the crew in the boat behind them (me).

Realising that this last (3rd) race of the day was going to make or break BrEllen’s reputation, they started being very aggressive towards EwAnna on the start line to show that they were in fact the big dogs, and it paid off with a final race win and therefore overall win for BrEllen.

Overall, it was a fantastic event, I would like to thank St Mary’s Loch Sailing Club for their 13/10 hosting and hospitality, lush campsite, and abundant catering with freshly made pizzas and 4 (4!) different desserts to choose from.

Next and final stop on the Stewart Brewing Scottish Tour for 2025 is Loch Lomond, this weekend, 5/6 September.  However, we also hope there will be good Scottish representation at the RS200 Northern Champs at GNAC, Bassenthwaite SC, 20/21 September.

Emilia Russell