I've just returned from a week on the Isle of Man. On the Monday I dropped in to the Manx Model boat clubs festival at Silverdale.
The venue is superb. It's a boating lake which the club have the use of for the day. As well as being set in lovely countryside there is a craft shops and cafe handy for refreshment and non-boating entertainment.
My visit was on the third day of the festival, one day for each leg of man on the flag and different challenge on each. Monday's are the steering competition and each boat entered had to complete what looked like a pretty easy course. Entries were split into 1 metre and above and less than 1 metre length models. As well as simply completing the course, boats were marked on how well they went around. To add spice, the boats shared the water with several ducks who came and went as they saw fit with some very spectacular water-ski landings.
A fun feature was that at one point each model had to stop between two buoys and if it had any operating feature - use them. Some models made noises, some sprayed water, one dropped a model buoy. The most memorable actually sank ! This was pretty impressive, especially as it then refloated and completed the course.
The members were very friendly. I chatted to several about their models which were uniformly of a very high standard.
More pictures in Flickr.
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