Spring Excuse — 23 April '10

23 April –25 April

Given the Captain of Cruising's habit of going aground and concerns from Bembridge Harbour Master regarding the draft of the average RTYC yacht we eventually and with some regret decided not to risk creeping in over the bar and instead convened at Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth.

All in all the Excuse this year combined vigorous but gentlemanly racing with a little bit of cruising sailing and of course the sort of attention to the finer side of life that Thames members consider essential. The racing took place in the excellent Mermaids at Sea View Yacht Club. Racing arrangements for the weekend were complex: on the Saturday, racing was run by Richard Prest, Pat Spalding and team from Sea View to the Cruising Committee’s relaxed specification and comprised the simultaneous running of the Committee Room Challenge (for which see the CSO’s pithy report) and what might be termed the Spring Excuse Exercise. Then on the Sunday the real racers were locked in an inter-club battle between SVYC and RTYC, with our team organised by RaceCom. Confused? So were we!

For the Cruisers, the weekend started with a Friday afternoon sail over to Gunwharf Quays, where we berthed rather carefully under the gaze of some of Portsmouth’s finest shoppers. Fenders, breasts and springs in place, the hospitality flowed as one would expect. As ever, John McMonigal’s Saba took pride of place, but it was special to see the Tracey’s back in the fray, even if they no longer sport a blue mast! Gradually numbers increased as refugees from the City arrived by car and conveniently by train. After some unexpectedly fine food, it was back to bed nice and early, mindful of dire warnings from the Captain of Cruising about the early start ahead.

Saturday dawned clear and with a gentle easterly breeze. Burgees aflutter, the Thames fleet motored the short distance across to Seaview, where we picked up SVYC moorings for the day and were ribbed in to their clubhouse for the race briefing. Crews were made up and allocated to boats in an appropriately haphazard manner, with youth, age, experience and inexperience scattered much at random.

The racing itself was truly great fun, tense at times but always good-tempered, briefly enlivened by a couple of high-speed passes from the Walker/ Robertson equipe in Tinkerbel and ultimately quite exhausting. Full results (by skipper) were:

1. Monty
2. Peter Tracey
3. Tim Fooks
4. Richard Powell
5. Peter Innes-Ker
6. Jilly Allenby Ryan
7. George Ehlers
8. Nick Atkinson
9. Nick Wakefield

Full marks to SVYC for their hospitality all day. Absolutely wonderful fun.

Back in Gunwharf Quays, the couple of hours that could have been spent resting and refreshing our bruised and battered limbs seemed to pass in a blur of even more board F & B. Yacht numbers were boosted to eight by the arrival of Roderick and Caroline (as usual taking up an awful lot of berth space) and newcomer Louise Pilkington. The subsequent dinner at Brasserie Blanc continued the weekend’s format of starting in confusion but turning out rather well, finishing well after midnight. It was nice to see that four of the younger members still had the energy at 1 am to queue to get into the Tiger Tiger nightclub!

Sunday morning was damp and drizzly, but nevertheless a hard core of members made it to the Spinnaker Tower for an English breakfast and a spot of fizz up high.

The freshening breeze gave us a sparkling sail back home, to round off a very full weekend.