The WoodenBoat Show at Mystic once again hosted the North American St Ayles Championship, this year in weather condition more reminiscent of the Scottish East coast. Low cloud and very fine drizzle – but warm!
With Lake Champlain and Moravian Academy attending the Worlds in Ullapool next week, the numbers were down, but no difference in the spirit of the meeting.
The ladies and gentlemen of Picton Ontario took the ten hour drive through New England to attend with one crew to race their beautifully finished Sea Shadow and Renbrook Navy’s William Shipp was driven down in the morning of the race with two crews. Renbrook are the closest to Mystic of all the North American clubs. To add a bit more to the event, the young men and women from Rocking the Boat in the Bronx also joined the regatta again.
Sea Shadow has been built with modern racing gates and is equipped with carbon fibre oars, while Willian Shipp has been built to the plans with home made wooden oars and kabes. A great imbalance was forecast, so we decided that each heat and final would see the crews race once in the Shipp and once in Sea Shadow with the time added to give the winner.
While the initial expectation was that the crews rowing Sea Shadow would trounce the Shipp what we actually found was that the racing was very close, and the Shipp won nearly as many races as Sea Shadow. Some very exciting races were watched by more spectators than we had last year; the possibility of multi-lane racing next year will help improve the spectator value.
The St Ayles spirit was evident – all the crews mixed and made friends, and hope to be able to put together another regatta before the end of the season. The winning crew came from Rocking the Boat. It is hoped that next year they will be attending with their own St Ayles.
Maybe a UK crew or two could make it to Mystic next year to join the fun!
We had a lot of interest in the St Ayles, and we will hope that at least some is translated into more skiffs being built in North America over the next few months.
Alec J