European Team Racing Reciprocal Regatta — 16 May '09

16 May –17 May

The Club hosted a most successful European reciprocal clubs team racing regatta over the weekend 16/17 May at Queen Mary Reservoir.

Sixteen visiting sailors – eight from YC de Monaco, four each from Verein Seglerhaus am Wannsee in Berlin and from Royal Port Nicholson YC in New Zealand – gathered with eight Royal Thames sailors and sundry other guests, race committee members and Flag Officers to celebrate what we hope will be the first of many regular informal invitation weekend regattas using the Knightsbridge clubhouse and local London-area sailing waters. As an experiment the weekend was a huge success, on and off the water.

Our visitors arrived on Friday, some during the day, others by mid-evening. Not all had flown in: as a club Royal Port Nicholson may be on the other side of the world – but to us, they seem close neighbours. All the team are presently London-based. By Friday evening the normally quiet (for a Friday) Britannia Bar was jumping, with George with his usual broad smile. Nothing pleases George more than to have people in the bar.

City of London Sea Cadets unit kindly provided their 'Tilly' (navalese for a minibus) to take us to Queen Mary reservoir where our six chartered RYA J80s were already bobbing at their moorings. 'Bobbing' somewhat understates the case – plunging is more apt, for with 20+ knots blowing from the south – right down the full length of the lake – Queen Mary's normally placid reservoir was more like The Solent on a windy day.

In keeping with the informal, sociable nature of the weekend, the sailing had been carefully planned to have no major trophy at stake and with no one going to be too embarrassed if they found another club had sent a team of experts. We began with some fleet racing, to get everyone's hand in. This, in the conditions, proved to be no bad thing: it took a fair while for everyone to settle down and familiarise themselves with the boats and gear. The two Yacht de Monaco crews demonstrated fairly convincingly that Mediterranean sailors can sail fast in strong winds as well as light, with their quickest crew scoring three straight firsts.

For the main body of the racing we used a novel format, based on our familiar Random Pairs two-boat team racing concept but using three-boat team racing instead. Now, anyone familiar with, for example, Kent Treble Bob Minor (or any indeed any other method of church bell ringing) will tell you that there are an awful lot of ways you can combine the numbers 1 through 6 without repeating the permutation. Happily Race Officer Richard Prest managed to come up with a schedule that let every boat race with and against every other boat without being in the same three-boat team (or combination, for anyone persevering with the bell-ringing/ mathematical metaphor) more than once in just 10 rounds of team-racing.

Each boat scored 1 point if in the winning team, and 0 points if in the losing team: thus the prize would go not necessarily to the fastest crew, but to the most wily. It would not be enough just to win – you had to make sure you team-mates were among the chocolates, too.

Richard completed half the three-boat schedule before coming ashore, and Pam the Tilley Girl took everyone back to the Clubhouse for the social activities to start all again.  It was a pleasure to see the Clubhouse in active use at a weekend, with George this time behind the Cumberland Bar and Thomas leading his team of waiters in a beautifully turned-out Mountbatten suite that showed our Clubhouse off splendidly to our visitors. The three-course hot buffet prepared by Igor and Bartosz spoke eloquently of the high standard of our catering - a further inducement to come and stay with us when next they are in London.

Rumour hath it that – the attractions of the clubhouse notwithstanding – after supper some of our visitors thought they would like to see what else London has to offer in the way of nightlife. Rumour hath it also that when they returned, George was still there, still smiling, waiting for them. Some people barely went to bed at all, it is said.

Which would not have done them much good next day, for to the 20+ knot breeze the Good Lord had added rain. The attractions of sailing an unfamiliar and somewhat feisty little boat on a grey lake in 20+ knots and driving rain proved too much for one of our visitors – but happily Jonathan, our Sailing Secretary, was ready to step into the breach.

The breeze in fact moderated thereafter, and another four team races could be sailed in moderate conditions.  For the fifth, however, the breeze kicked in again and the action for a time became so hot and furious in the close-quarters in-fighting just short of the finish line that our Sailing Secretary decided it was time to cool off – and went for a swim. Fortunately, the CSO was right on hand to give a text-book demonstration of the RYA-approved drill for recovering a man overboard, something that would have been of value to next weekend's ICC direct test candidates, had any of them been there.

With JB now ashore and drying off, one of the boats now only three-up and another unable to reef because of an earlier mainsail problem, this seemed an appropriate moment to draw proceedings to a timely close and Richard Prest needed no second bidding to display N over A. It was out of the bag and up in the air before you could say 'do you want to discuss the subject?'

Richly avenging their defeat in February's Royal Thames Carmela Cup, Royal Port Nicholson won the individual team racing but by just one point overall it was the crew from YC Monaco who had been most successful over the regatta and thus won the impromptu prize of a bottle of champagne. Each.

All in all, a resoundingly successful event: good sailing, new friendships and the club all aglow and a-glitter on a Saturday evening and being shown to best effect to our reciprocating friends.

The Racing Schedule and Final Scores are here.

Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions are here.