A Sailor's Insight: Rory McKinna

Now with the 2023 season well underway, Rory has expanded his repertoire and is now competing in Sonar and Challenger classes. He took time out from his busy schedule to update us on his progress.

“Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks on the sailing front.

I had a different start to the season this year, with a trip to the Isle of Wight to sail with the Andrew Cassell Foundation.

ACF is based in Cowes and specialises in enabling disabled sailors to compete in keelboat racing on an equal level. This session was just an introduction to how things work at the foundation and the different roles on the Sonar keel boat.

From there, I travelled up to Cirencester for the first of the 2023 Hansa TT series at Whitefriars.

Winds were light in the morning but picked up by the afternoon and we managed three good races. Much like last year, the top of the course was tricky, with trees on the bank sheltering one end of the course, and funnelling wind at the other. This held me back a bit, and I finished the event in second. It wasn’t until we came in that I remembered how I had tackled the conditions last year!

My club Hansa 303, ‘The Glasgow Bonnet’, got its first outing of the year at the first of the RYA Sailability North West TTs at Leigh and Lowton, Wigan. This series started last year and it’s good to see the number of competitors growing. I’m just enjoying the novelty of having competitions “closer” to home! There was barely any wind at times, but I managed to float my way to the front of the fleet and finished in first.

Back home, I had collected a Challenger trimaran from Clyde Cruising Club to use in the Sailability Scotland TT series. The boat hadn’t been used in a few years and needed a bit of TLC, but it was nice to see the hulls come up good with a bit of polishing.

With the Challenger ready to sail, I travelled to Annandale Sailing Club, Lockerbie, for the first Sailability Scotland TTs.

The weekend proved to be… wet, but spirits were high and there was some good racing to be had. Too good in fact. My position in the middle of the fleet suggests I have much to learn in this class!

It was then back south to Spinnaker Sailing Club, New Forest, for the next UK Hansa TT.

Spinnaker always puts on the sun, but the wind seems to spin in circles, with boats sailing from downwind to upwind without changing direction!

The racing was excellent, with a couple of high stakes “dogfights”, and I managed to finish 1st overall.

From New Forest, it was straight back to Cowes for my second session with ACF.

Again, I had a shot of the different roles on the Sonar (this time in stronger winds), but the consensus seems to be I’m most suited to helming. I just need to get used to other people being in the boat!

So, three classes of boat in under three weeks! A sign of things to come? We’ll see.”

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