Dazcat 1150 Bare Necessities Goes Cruising in Scotland (and just can’t resist a little racing)
Many thanks to Bare Necessities owners Bruce, Alison and Ellie for sharing their cruising times with us. Of course, they just happened to be in the vicinity of the Scottish Islands Peaks Race so…Well, Dazcats are cruiser-racers after all.
Thanks Bruce for the race write up below and to all of you for the filming of both your cruising and racing.
Bare Necessities – Dazcat 1150
Mostly spotted with other local Dazcats on the inshore and offshore race courses, in 2019 Dazcat 1150 Bare Necessities decided to head north for some new adventure and cruising grounds…
The Scottish Islands Peak’s Race
By Bruce Sutherland.
“Should we do it?” This was a very simple question we had put on the MOCRA forum. The replies from those apparently in the know were “Oh yes it’s the best one” and “much better than the other one”. The only issue was that Alison had planned on taking the boat to France this year. How do I convince her that it’s more fun to flog ourselves in cold wet Scotland, with a cabin full of muddy, smelly runners, rather than eat croissants al fresco in the sun. She doesn’t even drink whiskey!
The result was freezing our bits off sailing off the North Coast of Ireland overnight in May delivering Bare Necessities our Dazcat 1150 to Oban. I had done the other or “proper” Three Peaks sailing and running race previously and as The Scottish Islands Peak Race (SIPR) is held in near mythical status by its followers it seemed worth a go.
The race itself is simple, sail around some islands and run up and down some hills without any bother of handicaps if you are in the multi class. Most boats have a team of five with three sailors and two runners. There are also youth and all running classes. The event takes place in mid-May each year starting at Oban and involves about 160 miles of sailing, 60 miles of running with 3500 metres of climb and finishes about 100 kilometres south in Troon.
The runners do a short run at Oban before jumping into the dinghy and rowing to the boat and sailing to Mull where there is a much longer run to Ben Moore; they then climb back on the boat and sail to Jura where there is an even longer run over the Paps before staggering back onto the boat and sailing to Arran where… you guessed it, there is a long run up and down Goat Fell before finally presenting themselves back at the boat as near stretcher cases to be hauled aboard to sail to Troon and do a very short and slow run up a pontoon to the finish.
We internet dated for our runners and had a great time. I hasten to add we used the SIPR website not just any dating apps to find them!
As hopefully you can tell our admiration is for the runners; they basically do three off-road marathons with five peaks in just over two days from a boat. The sailing is all well and good but if it is hard sailing for the sailors because of bad weather, then the runners probably don’t sleep much, are sick and then they also have bad weather for their runs.
The bits us sailors don't normally see...
It's a long way back to the boat...
Sailing in Scotland is different
The wind seems to change direction and strength for no apparent reason. We normally we have a rough idea of what sails we will be using when and have even been known to plan sail changes. In our experience that is not how it works in Scotland. You very much sail in the moment. Which is all well and good until the moment goes from 13 knots to 26 knots with massive shifts.
During the race that did mean taking the decision to back off at times as there is not always lots of room to run to scream off downwind with a kite up. The other difference we noticed is that the tides are frequently strong enough to reset the sea, so it can be quite rough and then it becomes smooth in a matter of hours rather than days.
This is another one of the races where you can row and this time we got serious. We fitted rowlocks at the back of each hull and as luck would have it managed to borrow some long oars from a wonderful couple from a monohulls called Fearless Friend who had sadly gone aground on their way to the race and were no longer needing them.
Rowing is good for the soul. Rather than sitting getting irritable at the foresail flapping miserably you can take all that anger out on an oar. Staring at the moon’s reflection, phosphoresce and houses on Aran with real beds allows one’s mind to wander and ponder about the normal people who lived in them and whether they were aware of all they were missing asleep in the middle of the night? It was also rather amusing to hear that after we had passed fifteen monohulls rowing into Arran that several them also decided that they could cut the corner into the harbour entrance. Shame that they forgot the basic rule of never follow a multihull over shallows.
The speeds of the leading runners were mind blowing. Our runners, Lorn Smith and Raymond Evenden are good competitive club runners who do ultra-marathons and ironman racing and we have no complaints at all about their performances, but our race was pretty much catch up.
We would pick the runners up and then zoom through to the front of the fleet, wait for the runners and then zoom on through the fleet from the back again.
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Foss Quay
Mill Road
Millbrook
Cornwall
PL10 1EN
United Kingdom
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Visit the Contact Us page for details.
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