Vaucluse Challenge – this Saturday at DBSC

The first heat of our annual Vaucluse Challenge (VC) will be held this Saturday. For those who are new to the club, this is a hard-fought and longstanding tradition, where we battle it out against our well-heeled rivals from the French enclave for the glory of holding the perpetual trophy at our club for the following year. Both trophies (standard and radial) currently reside at DBSC and we intend to keep it that way. 

This heat of the VC is being hosted at Double Bay. The second heat in the new year will be at Vaucluse. The race starts at 2pm as usual, but the format is different. 

The format is a single long race of ~90min length comprising triangle, sausage, triangle, sausage, sausage, with the usual upwind finish. Note, the Standards will go first, followed by the Radials and 4.7s together. We will set the course in Rose Bay (possibly to the east of Shark Island) if it is a southerly as predicted. So, rig early and allow 30min to get out there. 

The scoring system for this year is yet to be confirmed (and will be explained at the briefing at 1pm), but suffice to say you want to get yourself in front of as many Vaucluse boats as possible. And, unless ridiculous, don’t call starboard on DBSC boats, but instead do a courtesy duck, which, for those who haven’t worked it out yet, is the right tactical decision anyway against any boat on any day!  Read that last sentence again. 

At the end of racing, we all head over to Vaucluse to enjoy their post-race entertainment. In past years, the turnout has been very poor and this is embarrassing for us. Please plan to join us at Vaucluse — we will have plenty of cars to carpool and take you there and back. 

And if that is not enough incentive, Saturday is still a Brett Beyer Saturday Program day. Brett will be doing the post-race debrief on the front deck of VYC and all are welcome to attend it (not just program subscribers). So please join us!