For the latest round of the Watling Streetworks Winter Series, there was little wind in the forecast and what was expected would be from the East. That side is protected by the ridge that separates East and West Baldwin with some, possibly, catabatic wind with the cooler air rolling down from Carraghan so it was patchy and mostly from Northerly direction down the West Baldwin valley.

The first race started ok but it soon turned into a stop start affair that eventually split the fleet into two groups.  If you were in the second group there was no escape and no chance of ‘leaping the gap’.

Follow this link for the full report – Watling Streetworks Winter Series – 16 March 2025

Nothing like a good forecast to bring out the crowd and in the bright sunshine of the Baldwin valley 16 crews competed for the final month of racing for the Watling Streetworks Dinghy Series.  This included full turnouts from both Peel and Laxey!

Unlike the previous Sunday, cancelled, there was wind and unusually it was blowing mostly down the valley with the usual light gusts and deadly calms.  With the wind, the ‘wrong way’ the Race Officer set a ‘wrong way’ course, marks to starboard (right hand side) rather than the usual port (left hand side).  To add to the extraordinary, only the small course using the top half of the lake, only adding to the sense of crowding of a massive fleet. Click her for the full report – Watling Streetworks Winter Series – 9 March 2025

Report by Andrew Dean

The weather forecast unsurprisingly reduced the fleet form last week’s 16 to just 4, although your correspondent might have competed had he not lost an argument with a drill.  With winds in excess of 20 knots in the Irish Sea, with a direction of just south of east, giving it a miss seemed sensible. A temperature of 3 degrees added to the unpleasantness.

But this did not deter Jerry Colman (Finn), George Pearce (RS Tera Sport) and Bob Love and Jason Hyatt (both Laser Radials), who seemed to enjoy the challenging conditions.  The wind arrived in medium gusts from every direction, not always easy to see from the water surface’s appearance.  Please click here for the full report – Watling Streetworks Winter Series – 16 February 2025

Write-up by Jerry Colman

Sunday morning’s races were started in a cold, grey and gusty Nor’Easterly. A fine fleet of 16 boats shepherded by Peter Hoosen-Owen and Kat Osbourn in our patrol boat ‘Hilary’ braved the conditions and if they worked hard enough were suitably rewarded.  Anyone who completed the course deserves props for guts and skills and for some for repeated recoveries from multiple capsizes of all modes. 

When your correspondent left Ramsey at around 0830 to prepare for the race the surf was roaring in Ramsey Bay so any dinghy sailing seemed a remote prospect. However, it’s never what you expect at Injebreck so on arrival at the dinghy park at around 0900 it looked manageable, if cold although with some quite strong gusts. Hoisting the sails resulted in some increasingly loud sail flapping in the gusts and for some of us a concern that it could be a bit much. But once the sails are up you gotta go and so it was. The full write-up can be found here – Watling Streetworks Winter Series – 9 February 2025

Another Sunday morning in the Baldwin Valley that missed the winter gales that the rest of the Island were experiencing.  I’d like to say the sun was shining too for the first of the February Watling Streetworks Series of dinghy racing but it did at least stop raining for a great fleet of 15 boats.

The wind blowing mostly up the valley allowed the Race Officer to set a square course, windward/leeward and two reaching legs at each end of the lake.  In the relative shelter of the valley there is no substitute for a large sail.  Jerry Colman (Olympic Finn) followed by Andrew Dean (Grey D-Zero) comfortably lead the fleet, at times by quite some margin. Click here for the full write-up – Watling Streetworks Winter Series – 2 February 2025