Picutre by David Harding

On Monday morning early the three of us wrapped up with every item of clothing we had and went out on our home waters in Poole harbour to umpire the annual Commodores’ Challenge regatta held between Poole and Parkstone Yacht clubs.  The event was set up over a decade ago (I participated in the very first one!) and provides the opportunity for youth members from both clubs to match race in large keel boats which are kindly donated for the event and training by club members.  We have all competed in the event through the years and was probably for each of us our first experience of match racing.

This years event was fantastic as always, with a lot of local support, some very close racing and a new sponsor: Hotel Du Vin and Bistro.  As I’d done a bit of coaching with Parkstone YC and Lucy and Kate with Poole, we were equally biased!  Luckily we didn’t have to give too many penalties and the series came down to the final race with Parkstone re-gaining form and winning 3-2 (I had to cheer silently).   The full report is below from Yachts and Yachting.

Annie x

Parkstone YC breaks four-year drought and wins 3:2

Twenty young Poole Harbour sailors and their entourage of coaches, parents and supporters were grateful when, on December 27th, the weather gods eased their icy grip on England and allowed the temperature to rise to a balmy 5 degrees centigrade for the Commodores’ Challenge, the annual match race on Elan 333 yachts between youth teams from Parkstone and Poole Yacht Clubs.

As the yachts headed out from this year’s host club, Parkstone, towards the race area off Brownsea, Poole’s sailors looked more focused, a little slicker in their boat handling, and altogether up for handing out another pasting to Parkstone. The best-of-five series was umpired by local sailors and Women’s World Match Racing Champions Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Kate Macgregor.

The Yachts looked resplendent with their green and white spinnakers of event sponsors Hotel du Vin and Bistro, in 15 knots of southerly breeze.

Poole YC won the first start and first race comfortably as Parkstone YC struggled to find good boat trim and speed. Parkstone won the second start but still lost out on the race win as Poole showed superior boat speed up the long beats into the tide. The tide had started to slacken by Race 3 and Parkstone pulled off an excellent start and were able to apply tight cover on Poole immediately. With a sense of control emerging, Parkstone’s nerves settled down, sail trim and boat handling improved, and they could start to dictate tactics. This brought them their first race win against Poole in three years.

The average wind strength eased a little for Race 4, although there were still handy gusts to be sought. Poole had the favoured end of the line for pre-start manoeuvres which Parkstone evaded in order to win the start and cover Poole. The race was not without incident for Parkstone, who had a couple of nervous moments with a close port and starboard call on the first beat, and an uncleated spinnaker halyard slipping back through the crews’ hands as the huge sail filled on the first run. With tight cover up the second beat and increasingly confident spinnaker work back downwind, Parkstone pulled the match back to two wins apiece.

One could sense the psychological tables starting to turn as the match came down to the tie-breaking fifth race. The yachts peeled in opposite directions in the prestart manoeuvres and Poole tried to acquire the tactically advantageous chasing position, but were not really close enough. Parkstone broke the chase by gybing closely around an anchored spectator boat and found themselves on a perfect line to the start enabling them to squeeze Poole out near the Committee Boat. The race saw a tactical re-run of race 4 with Parkstone eventually pulling away to a comfortable lead as Poole took risks, including a brief grounding, attempting to force errors on the covering Parkstone yacht.

At the prize giving team captains Amy Yeoman (Parkstone YC) and Sam Cross (Poole YC) thanked the yacht owners Andy Macgregor and Stuart Piddock for generously lending their boats, thanked their respective coaches and the sponsors’ generosity in providing sails and support. As Amy received the Commodores Challenge Cup for Parkstone YC said that she was really happy that the team had shown passion, perseverance, focus and determination to win.

We arrived at CNEA in the early afternoon and despite some confusion (mainly because we don’t speak French, and they not much English) were shown our rooms and the ‘facilities’.  The excitement of having a room each soon wore off when we realised that you can touch both walls when standing in the middle, and that the beds are designed more for 470 helms than Star crews (or more for Lucy and Kate than me!).  With reports confirming our fear that there was not enough snow to ski, and nor will there be (until we leave on Friday, when naturally heavy snowfall is expected!), we went to look around the facilities.  These were installed in 1968 for the French to train here prior to the Mexico Games, and as some pointed out, have not been updated since!  Hence the gym and weights room require some creative thinking to complete our normal workouts, but luckily Pete is on hand to help out and we’re warming to the retro style weight lifting!

So, with no snow or skiing prospects, we’ve not been allowed to sit around enjoying French cuisine (if only that were possible, the food here is… well just imagine bad school dinners), but we have been hiking.  Pete found us a guide and we’ve been on 4 — 5 hour hikes.  Today we climbed over 1000metres in minus 23 and about 30 knots of wind… but it was actually kind of fun.  Despite a few blisters, frozen water bottles and attempts at falling into freezing rivers (Flash and myself), we’re all alive and have just finished our pre-dinner stretch and swim before football later this evening.  Tomorrow we’re off to the summit and are leaving at 8.30am, so we’re back before it’s dark… umm I’ve just realised that’s 8 hours of hiking… HELP!!!

Annie x

Despite winning all three starts we were disappointed to finish 1–2 in the end, but I think luck was not particularly on our side! Conditions continued to be very shifty and the breeze died down a little in the finals which were very fluky and tricky, often with both teams in the same match sailing in completely different wind!

It has been a fantastic week though, the race course has been ideal training for us and the organisers have been very welcoming. Huge thanks to Katie Storck for joining Annie, Kate and I for the week and to Lawrence and Lisa Aqui for housing us. Now we are back to Miami for some more training in the Elliotts before returning to the cold!

Lucy

That concluded the first round robin, putting us in 2nd behind Sally on 6 — 1. We then went straight into the second round robin where we won all three of our races despite going from a run, to beat, to reach, to run, all on the first ‘downwind’ leg!

Tomorrow we’re scheduled to be sailing in the afternoon, where we will continue with the second round robin and maybe start the semi finals depending how times goes.

Keep up to date with all the action (Men around 1300 GMT, Women 1730 GMT) by watching the live video feed online!

Lucy

We had a strong start to the regatta today, sailing in the afternoon in crazy conditions with numerous shifts and pressure changes, we won all five of the races we sailed in the start of the first round robin. Tomorrow we will race in the morning against the two top American teams here before starting another round robin. The racing is all shown live on the Internet so tune in to watch some mad shifts!

Lucy

Prior to travelling to St Thomas (US Virgin Islands) for an event tomorrow evening, Annie, Kate and I have run away from the snow at home and are doing three days training in Miami on the way. The conditions have been fantastic so far, yesterday I was given 25 degrees and 10 knots for my birthday, and we had similar today. We are currently working on some boat handling with just one boat but we will be back after competing at the Carlos Aguilar Regatta to do some two boat training.

The photo shows a friend we recruited to come sailing with us yesterday!

Lucy x

Today we had ideal conditions with a light breeze and a bit of swell we raced all day, putting ourselves under a bit of pressure and remembering how to sail the Elliott 6M again!  The Russians have had a great year with results so we’re looking forward to the week focusing on some boat handling and speed work, much of which Annie and I have had very little time working on so far with Kate.

We’ll keep you posted,

Lucy x