Loughborough team racing

Miramar come out on top

Despite mumps spreading like wild fire around the student population, 16 teams made it to Loughborough to battle it out in Laser 2s at Burton Sailing club on 27/28 November. With the exception of Cambridge, all the teams made it to Loughborough for the Friday night social, FND, at the Student Union, before the first race on Saturday morning.

Saturday saw light breeze from the west, which gradually died after midday. The 16 teams were divided into two leagues, which meant 56 races sailed on a starboard ‘S’ course with the last few races completed as the sun set. In league A, Newcastle and last year’s winners Warwick were tied on 1st place, winning six out of seven races, third was Birmingham, with Durham second and Bristol tied for fourth on four wins. In league B Marimar (Loughborough old boys) won seven races, with Durham 1sts and Cambridge in joint second place with five wins, fourth place was Southampton Ladies.

Saturday night started with the traditional boat race, but with cheating rife it was impossible to call a real winner, but there were plenty of very wet sailors! The main entertainment for the evening was at Echos night club where there was meant to be a celebrity from Big Brother whom no one managed to find. Most sociable team of the event went to Birmingham who even tried to get friendly with the bouncers.

With the music from the previous night still ringing in many ears, Sunday morning dawned with the breeze swinging to the north and gradually building to 16 knots during the afternoon, which meant the races managed to be finished quite early (all in daylight!) but also caused a few swims, which is far from ideal at the end of November. The top eight teams from Saturday raced in the gold league, although the racing schedule had to be changed slightly when top qualifying team Miramar struggled to get up and had their first race changed from race 1 to race 13.

Miramar won all the races giving them the event, but behind them racing was extremely close and with one race to go, Warwick, Durham and Birmingham were all on 4 race wins. Warwick secured second overall with a win against Durham with Birmingham losing to Miramar to stay level with Durham. Durham then beat Birmingham in the sail off for third place. In the Silver league, Bristol 1sts, who missed out on a place in the gold fleet on tie breaker, made a clean sweep of the races to win their league. The next team racing event is the Bristol Brew on the first weekend of December.

Overall results:

1st Miramar (Jon Emmett & Ellen Milner, Dave Cheshire & Emma Pettitt, Andy Bryson and Kirsten Evans)
2nd Warwick 1sts (Chris Catt & Emily Riley, Charlie Roome & Rachel Clayton
Rob Ozanne &Rob Langford-Wood)
3rd Durham 1sts (John Battye & Chris Warburton, Dave Milledge &Clare Boston, Alex Good & Adam Osbourne)