Newcastle University Sailing Club

This weekend saw the firsts and seconds heading their separate ways to London and Sheffield respectively.  This was not to be the 1sts finest hour as some untimely capsizes and some more than sceptical umpire decisions they found themselves in the silver fleet and struggled against a Royal Thames team that finished Newcastle’s run to the quarters.The 2s however were in much better form and luck as they found there way through the round robin at a very competitive Sheffield event.  However they did not progress any further than the quarters as they were knocked out by Southampton.

The first event was the Leeds Halloween Howler which involved a minibus full of fun for the freshers initiation!  This was followed by an epic night in fruity which set us up nicely for the racing on saturday.  The first team, while winning all their races on saturday, found themselves starting behind alot of the time but made up for it with some solid boat speed and good boat handling to finish top of their group at the end of the day with only Nottingham 1sts to race.  The 2nds also had a solid day winning all of their races apart from against Durham Ladies.  This left them as 2nd in their group at the end of day 1.  After a big night out dressed as witches we arrived at the sailing club to find gale force winds and after leeds race committee tried to get in some races the decision was made after lunch to cancel the rest of racing.  This left the 1sts in first on count back of number of points with the seconds in a very creditable 5th!

Nottingham Snakebite report

Newcastle 1sts this weekend travelled to Nottingham for the amazing Nottingham Snakebite.  After a messy night in Ocean on Friday night Saturday was the perfect day for team racing.

Newcastle suffered slightly from hangovers on Saturday that definitely hindered performance. Two early losses out of five in the early stages of the round robins in the leagues led to us being positioned in the Silver Fleet at lunch time on Saturday.

Fortunately Newcastle found their form and went on to win every race for the rest of the day. After a night in Dogma dressed as Where’s Wally Sunday morning saw the continuation of the Gold, Silver, Bronze League and Newcastle sustained their race domination to win the Silver Fleet without having lost a race.

Quarter Finals were run on Sunday afternoon incorporating the top four teams from the Gold Fleet, top three from the Silver and top team from the Bronze fleet.  This allowed Newcastle another chance to reach the finals, racing Warwick 1^st team.  After winning the one-race quarter final Newcastle were against Bristol in the semi finals, sailed as best of three.

The three races were not needed as Newcastle won the first two, positioning them in the finals against West Kirby Youth Team. West Kirby took the first race convincingly but Newcastle fought back to win race two. Race three was extremely close with the event open to being taken at every mark. Unfortunately West Kirby sailed through to win the race and the event.

Newcastle therefore finished second out of the 18 teams racing and first University team. This is a fantastic result that shows the benefits of a season’s hard training and commitment and the advantages of the new fireflies we are now able to train in. We are now looking very positively towards the BUSA Team Racing Finals 15^th-17^th April.

Well done to the Newcastle 1st team who won both the Bottled Firefly and the Liverpool Lash last term.

7/8 Feb 09 - Despite the cold the Newcastle first team won all the races in their league at the BUSA Northern Qualifiers this weekend to guarantee them a place at the BUSC Team Racing Finals at Datchet in April.

The second team also sailed very well in their league, hopefully securing them a place at the Playoffs in March.

Well Done everyone!

Upcoming events - Sheffield Shuffle and Nottingham Snakebite - Good Luck!

This weekend saw both the first and second teams going to the Brummy Bender in Birmingham.

Photo ©: William Rook

Saturday saw the First team win all their races coming 1st,2nd and 3rd positions and the Second team won three races and lost three. Fortunately this was good enough for both teams to make it into the Gold Fleet on Sunday.
The Firsts made it to the semi finals and narrowly lost to Cambridge. Subsequently they Raced Notts Old Boys in 3rd/4th place play off and won it after a close race to come 3rd overall and were awarded some wine and medals.

1st team was

Ben and Fiona
George and Ed Fitz
Emma and Steve

2nd team was:

Ed Bates and Matt Bradfield
Alastair and Benji
Ian and Sally

Visit http://www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/?article=144248 for full details.
Well done guys - we wish you luck at the Durham Dambuster coming soon!