Global Team Racing Regatta

At the end of September, a team from RNCYC travelled to London to take part in the Global Team Racing Regatta, a 2-boat team racing event hosted this year by Royal Thames Yacht Club in their brand new fleet of Sonars at Queen Mary Sailing Club, competing against teams from the USA, Japan, UK, Netherlands and Germany.  

In the first round-robin, it became clear that the Americans were the teams to beat, with all 3 of their teams clearly well practised team-racing in Sonars, but RNCYC very nearly managed that with a very close race against the New York Yacht Club.  Losses to Japan and RTYC but victories over the Dutch and German teams put them in 6th place at the end of the round-robin.  The second round-robin continued in a similar vein, except for one race that was overshadowed by a hailstorm that made it hard to keep your eyes open let alone race. RNCYC very nearly beat RTYC, just losing at the finish as all 4 boats crossed the line together, but were happy to beat the Americans of Newport Harbor Yacht Club. A loss to one of the Dutch teams meant they stayed in 6th position, missing out on the semi-finals.  The Americans dominated the knock-out stages, with Newport Harbor going on to beat Eastern Yacht Club in the final.

Overall, this was a great event.  The standard of racing was very high, with teams well-practised in keelboat team-racing through the American or European keelboat team-racing circuits.  All the RNCYC races bar the hailstorm-impacted one were close, with lots of place-changing and tight team-racing manoeuvres and several races only decided close to the finish line. Everyone left feeling enthused for more team-racing next year, including the Commodores' International Cup at RNCYC in July.