We were reasonably fortunate with the weather over the Whitsun weekend. The sunshine on Friday evening tempted many members to enjoy drinks on the Sundeck, which coincided with a wedding as the bride and groom arrived by boat in their beautifully embellished outfits to walk up the pontoon to the beat of traditional Asian drummers. It was a wonderful atmosphere.

It was very pleasing to see the new Racebox looking finished, but unfortunately a problem with the air horn forced a decision to run the Regatta Line from the RCYC race box. Many thanks to the RCYC for allowing us to do so.

While many of the Whitsun Regatta competitors may still have been tucked up in bed on Saturday morning, the crews preparing for the EAORA were heading out to an RBYC Committee Boat Start Line to race round to West Mersea for the Pattinson Cup. After an overnight stay, the racing is then reversed on the Sunday for the Ralph Herring Trophy with a start at West Mersea then finishing at an RBYC Committee Boat Finish Line.

When the Whitsun Regatta competitors arrived on Saturday we were treated to plenty of sunshine and a reasonable amount of wind for the sailing, for which all fleets did a town course due to a large squib event taking place further downriver. The RBOD fleet certainly found the course challenging! Once all ashore, stories of the trials and tribulations encountered were shared on the Sundecks until the Commodore hosted reception drinks in the courtyard from 1800 before we headed up to the dining room for the delicious regatta dinner cooked by Dan Hull.

Sunday seemed more overcast at first, with the fleets taking an upriver course to Canewdon, again to avoid tangling with the numerous Squibs. The sun did come out later in the day and as the sailors returned ashore, the cadets were out in full force having a fun afternoon of crabbing etc on the pontoon.

In the evening competitors were joined by the returning EAORA fleet to enjoy a lovely barbecue. The addition of the EAORA crowd made for a very lively evening in the bar.

The only fleets planning to head out on Monday being the RBODs and the Cruisers, of which those with sails would race and those without sail propulsion undertaking the Predicted Log exercise.

On Monday in somewhat windier conditions than the rest of the weekend the Cruisers and RBOD fleet ventured out and completed their race or exercise. The prizegiving then took place in the bar because the temperature had turned decidedly chillier. Thanks must go to our Regatta Racebox team of Fianne Stanford, Sue Hooper, Liz Wastnage and Sidney Livingstone for all of the courses, starts and finishes which they ably handled despite their team’s depleted number that weekend. Thanks must also go to Andy Wise and team for running the Committee Boat for the RBYC side of the EAORA.

I hope that you have visited the club website recently and noticed that it has undergone a considerable and much overdue revamp. Unfortunately one consequence of this is that we have been unable to upload the results to the old software. It is planned that we will start using a different software, SailWave, in conjunction with the RCYC shortly, which should provide better integration and upload of results directly from the Raceboxes.

The Whitsun results are now on the website but in a slightly different format from before.
Please bear with us while we implement these changes.

For the RBOD report please click here

For the Cruising report & EAORA report please click here

Angela Shephard
Rear Commodore Sailing