Last Thursday and Friday a host of little boats arrived in North Berwick and parked themselves on Elcho Green thus, closing the putting green there. They started racing on Saturday and Sunday and will continue every day this week until the leave at the end of the week, just before the Highland Games take place.
They’re all competing in the Toppers National Sailing championships hosted by East Lothian Yacht Club. They’re called toppers as they are basically training yachts and all the sails feature a top hat. Most are crewed by teenagers – girls and boys because they are so easy to use. There are apparently over 270 registered entries and it certainly looks that number when they all put out into the water as you can see in the second photo below.
Toppers
Today however, there was very little wind, as someone said , more drifting than sailing. If fact checking out the latest news as I write this – competition has been abandoned for the day owing to lack of wind.
Sail crash on the high seas
I went down to the harbour today to take some photos and hung around for over 2 hours waiting on the start. Only by checking the blog just now did I find out it the start was delayed to see if the wind would pick up.
Toppers heading out to start competition
Oh, at least some on the support boats got lunch while waiting. I saw this being loaded underneath me from the harbour entrance wall and taken to the support boats nearest to the beach, those further out didn’t appear to get anything.
Lunch for support boats
Update today, Tuesday, its been raining most of the morning but there’s still little wind so no sign of them yet. It may end up being a disappointing week for them.
