Champion of Champions Team Racing

WORDS AND IMAGES: NIKKI CLARINGBOLD

It’s official – the Flying Fifteens are the Champion of Champions for Season 2020-2021!

In what shaped up to be more favorable conditions than forecasted, the nine RHKYC Club classes of Big Boats, Dragons, Etchells, Flying Fifteen, Impala, J80s, Pandora’s, Ruffians and Sportsboats, along with a team for the RHKYC - Sharks Racing Squad, set out to lay it all on the line to determine the ultimate Champion of all Champions on Saturday 28 August at Middle Island. Racing in the Club’s Quest dinghies, without spinnakers, RO Bonnie Cheng and ARO Mark Parker made light work of putting the teams through their paces and pushing out 20 races to decide the overall Champion of all the RHKYC Class Champions. The skippers and their crews qualified for the event as the current Class Champion (or runner up) and were scheduled in a Random Pairs Team Racing format. Paired up randomly with another Class Champion, teams are regrouped after every flight of races and receive 1 point for a win and 0 points for loss, with the aim for the individual Class skippers to achieve the maximum wins in order to take out the ultimate prize and be crowned the Champion of all Champions. The racing this year was held just outside the RHKYC Middle Island Clubhouse on the waters of Deep Water Bay, providing ample opportunity for fellow sailors passing by to offer plenty of encouragement and advice! With the forecast threatening thunderstorms and 10 to 20kts of breeze, racing got underway in relatively benign conditions of 4 knots. With light conditions prevailing, competitors had been reminded by Chief Umpire Jamie Boag that his team were going to be “kinetically vigilant” with regards to Rule 42! With many of the competitors sailing in a team racing format for the first time, RHKYC leading Team Racing experts Jamie Boag and Mark Parker, presented a very informative and well attended seminar the night prior to the regatta. Offering great practical advice, this event targeted guidance on tactics and the rules involved in Team Racing. With a short disruption to the racing schedule at Flight 5, races 9 and 10 were abandoned due to a large thundery squall around 1230hrs with all the sailors sent ashore for safety whilst the unsettled conditions passed. Once back on the race track, the day brightened up considerably and the racing stepped up a notch as the teams got into the swing with true Team Racing spirit. With the overall win coming down to the wire in the very last race, the Dragon class had to watch on in a bye as their nemesis for the win, the Flying Fifteens, battled it out on the racecourse. The umpires were kept very busy in this last race waving flags, blowing whistles and issuing multiple penalties as the sailors battled it out at the second to last mark on the course.

After a fantastic session out on the water, the final results were counted back and the team of Peter Britten and Oliver Merz, representing the Flying Fifteens came up trumps to be awarded the win and the bragging rights for the year as Champion of Champions for Season 2020-2021! Whilst putting the Flying Fifteens back on the score board, the team has also successfully broken the tight grip held by the Sharks Youth Squad on the title for the past 3 years. Another great day of close racing and camaraderie enjoyed enormously by all those who took part and who can now all look forward to competing in the new Inter-Class Team Racing Festival to be held in May 2022.