Team Racing

Optimist National Club Team Championships, 2007

Looking for the Optimist Team Racing pages?

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During the winter of 2004/05 Steve Tylecote, former World Champion and current member of the GBR team introduced team racing to the Burghfield calendar. After a few weekends training that introduced some to the sport, and reminded others of their university days, the club has started to enter teams into events.

It is the intention to develop team racing within the club. Not everyone who sails wants to go team racing however if you want lots of short highly competitive races where boat handling skills count for more than the size of your bank balance then team racing could be for you.

This section will keep you up to date on both activities planned at the club and our progress at the open events.

For more details on team racing at Burghfield contact

UKTRA finals Bough Beech March 2006

The UK Team racing national finals were at Bough Beech Sailing Club over the weekend of March 18th and 19th.

No training could have prepared us for the conditions we got on the Saturday, and it showed. We did not have a good Saturday in the very strong winds but by Sunday it had eased a little and we were becoming more used to the boats and the racing became more enjoyable. In the end we acquitted ourselves respectably for a ’non professional’ team beating the other club teams, the youths and 1 university.

After a minimalist briefing because they assume that, by the time you get to the final you know what is going on, the first teams went afloat at 10.am..

There were 18 fireflies, that is 3 races going on at a time. They ran a rib ferry service so that you waited on the pontoon for your turn, then they took you out and you swapped into a set of boats and did 2 races before returning the same way. They had split the 18 teams into 2 leagues and in the first round we sailed a full round robin of 8 races.

Our first races were numbers 10 and 14. By the time we got to go it out was obviously blowing very hard and the wind was increasing. We struggled in the wind, not helped by Chris having a bow tank full of water and his toe straps breaking. They replaced that boat after our races and then brought all the other boats in to put on cut down sails. Yes it really was that windy.

When our turn came again it was still windy. Boats were just blowing over waiting for the start even with the cut down sails. What we found was that the fireflies with cut down sails handle very differently and we were still struggling on speed not getting anywhere near team racing. It wasn’t until the last race of the day when the wind dropped a little that we finally got into the game and fought a close 2,3,6 losing to West Kirby Hawks, but at least we were in and fighting.

And then we drew the short straw, they finished the day with us between our 2 races so we got to put the boats away and get them out next morning!

Sunday was scheduled to start at 9.00 and with a slightly lighter forecast we put the full sized sails back on and went out. We sat for half an hour while they set up and it got seriously windy again. Again we struggled and it wasn’t until our last race, the last in the round robin series that we finally won one, beating the Royal Navy who had already got 3 wins.

The teams were then split into 3 groups, Gold, Silver and Beer. Our one race put us firmly in beer but with a chance to get some credibility back.

Our fortunes were still mixed, probably reflecting the lack of practice and hence understanding between the team members. We lost to the Schools team again, with all 3 of us messing up the start, we lost to Sheffield University converting a 2,3,4 to a disaster on one misjudgement at a mark trap in a big gust but beat the Royal Navy again, Bough Beech and Hamble River. This was good enough to give us 2nd in our group to the only team we beat twice! Life has its quirks.

For the record, the event was won by the Spinnaker All Stars led by Steve Tylecote. They were in the other league so we only met them on shore. Probably just as well.

The Burghfield team was:
Chris Martin & Ellie Martin
Stacey Clark & Hayley Clark
Rob Martin & Caroline Martin

UKTRA qualifier 2006

Burghfield SC are South Midlands Team Racing Champions.

On a cold January day at Farmoor reservoir Burghfield caused an upset by emerging as joint winners of the South Midlands qualifier for the National Team Racing Championships.

Light winds prevented the whole series being complete, but when it got dark there were only two unbeaten teams - Burghfield and Magnum. Despite the handicap of youth (the youngest competitor) and experience (the three oldest!) the team were still able to secure victories over teams such as Bristol 1, current British University Champions, and Castaways

The finals are the weekend of 18th/19th March at Bough Beech SC

Team: Chris Martin and Rachael Harrison, Rob & Jan Martin, Stacey & Hayley Clark

Reading Wet Dream 2005

In 2005 we entered several teams in the Reading University “Wet Dream”. Over two days of racing two of the Burghfield SC teams emerged first and second…with the teams’ performance on day two being significantly sharper than the students in other teams!!