The NOT Loch Long Week 2020 – weekend!
by Robert Mulcahy 21 Jul 2020 08:54 BST
18-20 July 2020
The NOT Loch Long Week 2020 © AYC
The traditionally beautiful wooden 21ft Loch Long One Design keelboat has her roots at Loch Long on the Clyde, but these days the biggest fleet of nearly fifty boats lives on Suffolk's River Alde racing from Aldeburgh Yacht Club.
The class National Championship known as "Loch Long Week" rotates between the Rivers Clyde and Alde and this year the Suffolk club was looking forward to hosting our friends from Scotland, until the Coronavirus took hold, forcing a cancellation of the full week's worth of competition. However, as lockdown regulations were eased it was very apparent that the home fleet were eager for some competition, so the event was scaled down and the "NOT Loch Long Week 2020, weekend!" was born.
Six races were planned over three days and 23 boats quickly signed up. The oldest boat was number 3 Flight launched in 1937 and the youngest number 142 Skye launched in 2012.
With the desire to allow crews to remain within their own family bubbles, many husbands & wives teamed up but felt uncomfortable handling spinnakers so the organisers took the opportunity to split the large fleet in to non-spinnaker and spinnaker classes although everybody started from the same start line to encourage fleet unity.
Two races per day of roughly 60 minutes soon established that Tom Faulkner in number 53 would be dominant in the non-spinnaker class whilst Chris Mayhew in Meg 126 seemed to have an uncanny knack of leading the way in the spinnaker class. The event finished off with a socially distanced prize-giving on the terrace at Aldeburgh YC followed by a huge take away order for fifty from Aldeburgh's famous fish and chip shop.
Overall Results:
Spinnaker Class
1st Meg 126, Chris Mayhew
2nd Fiona 141, Robert Mulcahy
3rd Zimmer 25, Aril Liddell
Non Spinnaker Class
1st Aurora 53, Tom Faulkner
2nd Skye 142, George Hill
3rd Tantrum 139, Jonathan Evans
The class now looks forward to a Covid-19 compliant socially distanced Aldeburgh Regatta from 17 - 21 August.