Team Racing at Waldringfield
by Neil Collingridge 29 Apr 2025 08:43 PDT
20 April 2025
Team Racing at Waldringfield © Neil Collingridge
On Easter Sunday, Waldringfield Sailing Club held its inaugural Team Racing taster day on the beautiful River Deben.
The club recently acquired a good condition flight of Fireflys with 3 club members driving to Glasgow and back to collect them on a huge trailer lent to them by Royal Hospital School - a big thankyou was due as one trip from Suffolk was quite enough for the drivers.
The initiative is being driven by a core team who recognise the value that team racing can bring. The Club has long been a hot-bed of top level sailors from the Cadet Class and others but in the past many of these have got to University without having learnt to team race. That puts them at an immediate disadvantage alongside those that have. But the programme envisages that the Fireflys will be used by more than just junior and youth members. It's going to be pay-to-play racing open to anyone who fits in a Firefly - rather different to Waldringfield's existing and very successful one design fleet racing, and with a commitment to ensure we do it so as not to clash with the Club's existing racing calendar.
At the taster session we were joined by a long time ex-Oppie champion (now in his c.40s), a former U21 Team Racing World Champion from back in the early 2000's and a Wayfarer sailor who managed to team up with a 12 year old Primrose, a superstar of tomorrow, who crewed for him. Anyone can do it! Also coming to the party were a crowd of ex-Cadet sailors from Waldringfield and elsewhere who were very happy to be bribed into teaching some team racing skills by the offer of a few beers in the pub afterwards. Pairing that lot with a group of current cadet sailors plus one or two others from toppers and RS200's allowed the team to run lots of short, sharp races through the day with helms and crews swapping in and out of boats and changing roles throughout the day.
It was a day of barely organised chaos but great fun. The weather played ball - sun and 12 knots - and we managed to set course areas where the tide didn't really matter. Everyone was keen to do some more and the core team are now coming up with plans to roll this out through the season. Watch this space!