Race Report - Saturday 8 February

Club Sprint Racing

Report by Miles Greenwood and James Tudball

Last Saturday we had another instalment of our Youth Volunteering Program, where a team of our youth sailors manage the onshore and on-water duties. Miles Greenwood (PRO), Elouise Morgan (co-PRO), Healy Ryan and Felix Feng (COTD) and Hamish Crabb (canteen) comprised our dedicated team for the day, along with some minor assistance from James Tudball and Healy's dad, Craig Ryan.

The biggest challenge the team experienced on the day was dealing with the Sail GP exclusion zone, which was active from 2pm and encroached on our patch of the harbour! Sail GP is a great spectacle and fantastic for the sport of sailing, so our ever-positive management team happily settled on a short and sharp course, set within Double Bay, with the top mark carefully placed 50 metres south of the exclusion zone.

The second biggest challenge was Hamish's arm, which is currently in a sling.  His dislocated shoulder meant he had a tricky time chopping the mushrooms, capsicums and onions.  But with Healy's support (and of course Paul and Shirley assistance) they managed to get the job done, just.  Hamish's emotional support was appreciated and we wish him well in his recovery.

Miles delivered a well-executed briefing at 12pm and the team proceeded to kick off Race 1 at 1pm on the dot.  This was important as we knew we would only have 1.5 hrs of racing before the harbour turned into a washing machine with Sail GP racing and the spectator boats.

Our fleet of 35 Lasers enjoyed 5 x races in a lovely little 8 - 12 knot breeze.  We had close racing and great representation out there from all 3 ILCA rigs. In the ILCA 4, race wins went to Charlotte Jenkins, Raph McLachlan and Patrick McLachlan on his first day racing with us - welcome to the club, Patrick!

In the ILCA 6, wins were notched up by the in-form Scott Hunter, Martin White (who is always in contention) and also our special guest, Jon Emmett.  Jon is a World Masters Champion and a fantastic coach.  There are whispers that Jon and his partner, Lijia Xu (who is an Olympic gold and bronze medalist in the ILCA 6), may skip the UK winter and live in Sydney during our next summer - and sail with us at DBSC.  This sounds like an excellent plan and I know many DBSC members are hoping this comes to fruition!

In the ILCA 7, race wins went to John Sweeney, Conor Kellett and Quentin Burns.

After the "main event" (= DBSC Laser Sprint Racing), a number of members went out on the water to watch the Sail GP action.  This was a brilliant spectacle and incredible to think that a modern sailing event has the power to shut down Sydney Harbour for 3 hours.

Given the young demographic of our on-water team, most of the content gathered from the day's action was on video...and in portrait mode.  The older 2ICs (Craig and Tuddy) were busy keeping an eye on proceedings and failed to capture still photos from the day.  However, we created a couple of Instagram Reels from the day's action which were posted to DBSC's instagram account.  

You can CLICK HERE for Insta Reel #1

And you can CLICK HERE for Insta Reel #2

Photo by James Tudball