Regatta 2025

Last update 20 August 2025.

Holm Pursuit Race 2025

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Nine boats took part in Holm Sailing Club's annual pursuit race in St Mary's Bay. Blustery conditions resulted in a few capsizes. Jester, a Laser EPS, sailed by John Orr, took the winin what turned out to be a close race. For the event each class starts at a different time with a target race of 90 minutes. The start times were all on Saturday morning with a 12:00 finish.

Results

Kirkwall Regatta 2025

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Kirkwall Regatta took place from 1 to 3 August with racing on Friday evening as well as through the day on Saturday and Sunday. The weather was light on Friday and Saturday and turned quite fresh on Sunday giving challenging conditions. Many thanks are due to all those who made the event a spectacular success, including the sponsors Highland Park Distillery.

From left: Lewis Shaw (ILCA6), Brian Kynoch (Catherine J 2), Callum Rendall (Willy Flipit), Scott Johnstone (Willy Flipit), Martha Hall (Highland Park), Harcus Hutchison (Harmony), Kyle Harcus (ILCA7), George Colcomb (ILCA7), Ian Fitzgerald (ILCA6).

A Pursuit race was held on Friday 1 August with Six yachts and nine dinghies (ILCA, Snipe and Hobie 16). The boats were set off on a 90 minute race round a course in Kirkwall Bay. To account for handicaps the slow boats started first and the faster boats started at fixed later times.

For the yacht pursuit race Harmony (Harcus Hutchison) started first and held his lead, Catherine J 2 (Brian Kynoch) was the last starter and caught up with most of the fleet but was still behind Harmony at the finish time.

Results:

Yachts Pursuit Race (Friday afternoon)

Dinghy Pursuit Race (Friday afternoon)

On Saturday the traditional regatta races started with class races, yacht races and an allcomers race. As it turned out the Allcomers race was only Snipe Class boats. The Yachts had a long race in the morning followed by a long Afternoon race.

Yachts Morning Race

Yachts Afternoon Race

Yachts Afternoon Race: Harmony took the win in the afternoon race finishing just a few seconds ahead of Catherine J 2 on handicap.

The Snipe Class had three races, two morning races followed by the Allcomers in the afternoon.

Snipe Morning Races

Snipe 1

Snipe 2

Allcomers (Snipe)

The cats had three races with four boats taking part. Callum Rendall's Willy Flipit won all three races with Scott Johnstone as crew. Plum Crazy took second place with Ian Rushbrook at the helm and George Shearer as crew.

Cats Morning Race 1

Cats Morning Race 1: Double Trouble (Steven Bruce and Flo Unagoro) got off to a great start and held the lead for most of the first leg, in the second leg Katoosh (Kazia and Nicky Watson) took the lead. A cruise liner anchored in the bay gave a decision for the boats to go North or South of the vessel. It turned out the boats that went south benefited, Willy Flipit got ahead and led too the end of the race.

Cats Morning Race 2

Cats Morning Race 2: Once again Double Trouble got off to a good start but Willy Flipit managed to get ahead staying south of the liner.

Cats Afternoon Race

Cats Afternoon Race: This race was a longer event but due to the light conditions the yacht race marks were used. On the downwind leg the wind died leaving the boats becalmed for about five minutes, the breeze filled in from the west and Willy Flipit was first to catch it and took the lead. Shifty light conditions made tricky sailing with a few place changes through the race.

ILCA/Laser 1

ILCA/Laser 2

Scottish ILCA traveller event

Six races were held over the regatta weekend as part of the Scottish ILCA traveller series. Competitors included some folk from south and a few of the new Island Games boats. Three races were run back to back on Saturday afternoon and then three races were run back to back on Sunday morning. Conditions were light and shifty on Saturday and then a gusty fresh northwesterly set in on Sunday. There were quite a few capsizes on Sunday.

ILCA sailors from left: John Orr, Robbie Mackley, George Colcomb, Kavan Kynoch, Ian Fitzgerald, Lewis Shaw, Kathryn Moar, Connor Gilmore, Mark Taylor.

ILCA7

On Saturday Kyle Harcus won the first two races and came fourth in the third, while Kavan Kynoch took 2 place in all three races. George Colcomb finished in 3 place in the first two races and then took teh win on the third race. On the Sunday Kyle took the win on the first race with George in 2 place followed by Connor Gilmour. George went on to win races 5 and 6 with Kyle in 2 place and Connor again in 3 place. After six races the boats had a single discard.

ILCA6

In the smaller ILCA6 fleet Ian Fitzgerald finished with a perfect score winning every race. Lewis Shaw took 2 place in the three Saturday races, on Sunday John Orr took second place on the three races. Mairi Fleet took 3 place in race 1 and 3, and Kathryn Moar took 3 place in race 2 and took 3 place on the Sunday races sailing an ILCA4 rig.

Westray Regatta 2025

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The 100 years anniversary Westray Regatta was held on Saturday 26 July 2025 in fresh conditions. A good number of Snipe came across on the ferry for the event but conditions were a bit rich for many. There was high drama in the first yacht race when most of the fleet were disqualified due to missing one of the marks of the course. In the morning the wind was a bit too fresh for dinghies but the yachts got a race.

In the afternoon the dinghies had a blast with ILCA/Lasers and Snipe enjoying the boisterous conditions. Kammy Kassie (Kavan Kynoch, ILCA6) did well winning both the ILCA/Laser race as well as the Allcomers.

Results:

Yachts Morning Race

ILCA/Laser

Allcomers:

Catamarans

Two catamarans took part in the regatta, they ventured out in the morning but one capsized so the race was abandoned; they had two better races in the afternoon.

Catamarans Morning Races

Dipping Lug Sailed Yoles

It would not be Westray regatta without some traditional boats and three of the dipping lug sailed yoles took part in the spectacle. They had one race in the afternoon.

Lug sailed Yoles

Yachts Afternoon Race

Orkney Island Games 2025

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In July 2025 Orkney hosted the Island Games and Orkney Sailing Club ran the sailing event. The sailing was held in Kirkwall Bay north of the OSC regular club racing area. Each Island group is able to compete with a team of four, two in the ILCA6 rig and two in the bigger ILCA7 rig. Medals were presented for ILCA6, ILCA7 and the team event. The team result was a combined score from the three best results from each race from the four competitors. In total 12 Island groups competed in the sailing event with 19 competitors in the ILCA7 class and 22 competitors in the ILCA6 class, six of which were ladies. Ten Islands competed for the team competition. Official results for the evnt can be found here and boat tracking can be found here.

The weather through the five days of competition gave a range of sailing conditions. On Wednesday the ILCA6 class missed racing due to calm conditions in the morning, but the races were made up on Tuesday and Thursday. The racing was very well organised with windward leeward races, after the first few starts the U flag was used to keep the fleet behind the line. A team of volunteers were on hand during launch and recovery to ensure a smooth process. A jury boat was running around the race course to keep any rule 42 infringements in check, there was some flag waving and penalty turns but nothing too serious. There were two protests where in one case an arbitration penalty was taken, in the other a boat was disqualified.

In race 4 of the ILCA6 fleet there was a tight situation between Shetland 50 (Michael Tait) and Minorca 46 (Harrison Moore) on the start line. Shetland 50 protested Minorca 46, Minorca accepted an arbitration penalty which changed a 6 place result to a 11.6 point score.

In race 8 of the ILCA7 fleet there was a protest between Isle of Man 08 (Timothy Dunn) and Ynys Mon 19 (Alistair Dickson) where IOM 08 had tacked in front of YSM 19 nearby the windward mark on the second beat. The protest was held and IOM 08 was disqualified from the race. The consequences of the disqualification were that IOM 08 missed out on a bronze medal; he was placed third in race 8 prior to the protest.

Orkney ran a formalised selection process to select the island games team which was made up of Ewan Sinclair, Kavan Kynoch sailing ILCA6, Kyle Harcus and Andrew Leslie sailing ILCA7. Unfortunately Ewan Sinclair pulled out of the event a few days before due to a back problem. Joshua Brown took his place for the ILCA6. The racing was planned to run with two races each day for each class with the racing running over five days from Sunday to Thursday.

ILCA6:

The ILCA6 event was won by Oliver Mayo from the Isle of Wight with an impressive score of 12 points, winning seven out of 10 races. Menorca’s Ines Maria Abreu Garcia finished in 2 place with two wins and 33.5 points. The bronze medal went to Will Jackson of the Cayman Islands, Will finished with the same points (44) as Benjamin Todd of Ynys Mon but took the medal on count back. Joshua Brown finished in 8 place on 82.5 points having sailed a consistent series and getting some great results on the Thursday races. Joshua’s 8 place is Orkney’s best individual performance at the Island Games sailing event. Kavan Kynoch finished in 19 place with some good results. This event was Kavan’s second Island Games event and his results show a big improvement from his Guernsey performance.

ILCA7:

Arthur Farley of the Isle of Wight dominated the ILCA7 class winning all but one race giving a perfect score of 9 points. Josh Metcalfe of Ynys Mon took the silver medal with 32 points. Harry White from the Isle of Wight took the bronze medal on 38 points. Harry finished with the same points as Alistair Dickson of Ynys Mon but took the medal on scoring count back. Kyle Harcus finished in 13 place on 102 points, a creditable performance in his first Island Games event. Andrew Leslie sustained a knee injury on the first day of racing and was unable to compete on Monday and Tuesday missing half of the races.

Team event:

For the sailing team event the gold medal went to the Isle of Wight (Arthur Farley, Oliver Mayo, Oliver Smith, Harry White) on 62 points. Ynys Mon (Alistair Dickson, Catherine Elson, Josh Metcalfe, Benjamin Todd) took the silver with 146 points. Guernsey (David Aslett, Monty Desforges, Darragh Lee and Jessica Watson) took the bronze medal. Orkney finished in 6 place for the team event with 363 points, the best sailing team result in Orkney’s Island Games history.

Ladies:

Six ladies competed at the event in the ILCA6 class. The top lady was Ines Maria Abreu Garcia on 33.5 points. The second placed lady was Jessica Watson of Guernsey with 48 points. Catherine Elson of Ynys Mon was placed third with 114.5 points.

Appreciation:

Thanks are due to all of the volunteers involved in running the event. The committee boat in use was Spruce, a good sized cruising yacht, but there were several other boats used for mark laying (thanks to Scottish Sea Farms) as well as local sailing club ribs used as safety boats and media boats. There was a team of volunteers on the slipway to help running trolleys in and out, Matthew Vaughn of Orkney Sailing Club managed the tracking system to ensure real time tracking of the races went smoothly. Overall event management for the sailing was run by Ian Rushbrook from Orkney Sailing Club. The Principal Race Officer was Laura Hughson from Australia. There are very many other volunteers working behind the scenes who made the event a success and who are worthy of praise.

Holm Regatta 2025

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Holm Regatta was held on Saturday 5 July 2025. The day started fairly damp with a fresh westerly breeze, conditions dried up a bit and there was plenty of wind to provide some exciting sailing. The ILCA/Laser class was represented by four boats in the ILCA6 and ILCA7 classes. There were six Snipe, mainly local boats but also with Mandarino (Mark Taylor and Steven Shorter) from Stromness. Two races were held in the morning followed by a break for lunch and then an afternoon race for the Allcomers trophy.

Lee Thomson sailed his Tasar which was included in the Snipe start. He won the Mixed Centreboard trophy but was the only competitor in that race.

The dinghies course was a triangle followed by a windward leeward sausage. This gave some fast reaching, a decent beat as well and some tricky running. There were a few capsizes among the Laser/ILCA fleet.

Results:

Snipe Morning Races

Snipe

ILCA/Laser

Allcomers:

Catamarans

Three catamarans took part in the regatta, they had three races, two in the morning and then a longer race in the afternoon.

Catamarans Morning Races

Catamarans Afternoon Race