Findhorn Rally 14th/15th July 2007

by Ian Hampson, Rally Organiser

Our planned Sail to the Old Bar for Saturday had to be cancelled when the weather forecast showed heavy rain and winds NW 5 – 7.  As anyone can imagine any northerly winds of that magnitude are bad news for Findhorn with the sand bar and narrow channel at the entrance.

We were made very welcome at the Captain’s Table, (part of the Findhorn Boatyard) in the evening and enjoyed a superb dinner with a total of 15 attending including Simon and Katrina Paterson, owners of the boatyard.  The dinner ended with a most interesting talk on the progress of the Moray Inshore Rescue Organisation’s Rescue Station which has been set up and covers the coastline between Nairn and Burghead. MIRO is independently funded and has a RIB with Twin 60hp Engines which complies with the requirements of the Coastguard and the RNLI. This service has been fully operational since January 2007 and to-date has had 11 call-outs.  This is a great asset to the area where otherwise the RNLI response time is 2 hours.

The Sunday weather could in contrast to Saturday’s weather only be described as marvellous and two Coasters and my Drifter had a most enjoyable sail and rafted up for lunch in the Old Bar. The NW 3-4 forecast due to veer Easterly, meant we motored there but were able to sail most of the way home.

One disappointment was that all the yachts were Findhorn based. It is my intention to work on this and even consider what weekend, giving tides the mandatory consideration, could maybe suit more visitors.