The Coigach Lass is launched – and the race was on

 After a very low key launch of our own St Ayles Skiff  ‘Ulla’ on Friday a substantial contingent of the Ullapool ’A’ team descended on the Coigach harbour of Old Dornie this afternoon to witness the launching of the ‘Coigach Lass’. The second of three St Ayles Skiffs being built on  Loch Broom for community  participation in the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project she is the fourth of her class to get wet. The celebration was very strongly supported by the local community and was notable for being the first occasion when more than one St Ayles could be seen on the water at the same time as we chose to row ’Ulla’ into Old Dornie to join in the celebration. Inevitably this resulted in the first St Ayles Skiff Race albeit a very informal affair with a mixture of each group in each boat – so I suppose no community can claim first blood . Of course being the visitors and it being such an important event for Coigach it was only courteous for us to allow the Lass to cross the line first!
As the snaps show, builders Ali and Ron made a superb job of the build assisted by Ken in a far from shabby paint job. We were well impressed by the outcome. Well done to the Coigach on a magnificent community effort. A gratifyingly large number of future oars(wo)men tried their hands at making her fly – we at the other end of the Loch are going to have to go talent scouting if we are to have any hope of competing with this lot!

A few snaps from the day , more and video will follow.

A fine stern

Everybody lift

She floats

The man who wasn’t going to go to sea

Skiff inspired traffic chaos

as tasty as it looks

Ulla draws nigh

Historic meeting of Skiffs

A fine pair of Coigach ‘Lass’s, one is the boat’s figurehead

The Race

Ulla rows off into the sunset

And now for the moving images

After the speechifying the Lass was duly piped down the slip and into the water

The first crew, Ron (Bow), Steve, Ali, Lesley (Stroke) and Ken (Cox) take to the water

The Skiffs meet up off Isle Ristol

And ‘The Race’

and she is very manageable single handed as Steve demonstrates

Other reports are available at

The Coigach Lass site
Rowing for Pleasure
Dory-man
In the Boatshed

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