Sam Goodchild Sailing

The Yachts & Yachting Press Release:

The NSSA Match Racing Championships went ahead at Queen Mary Sailing Club over the 19 and 20 April. Close racing and a great experience for all was helped by cold but good sailing conditions over the weekend. The event proved to be extremely popular and several entries had to be turned away after the event was over subscribed!

This year the NSSA elected to use J80 match racing boats to give competitors a real taste of big boat sailing. They were not disappointed and the weather made the racing even more challenging, resulting in one reef being required across the fleet and a ban on spinnakers on the first day.

The Saturday morning started with a practise session and a wind gusting up to 20knots which gently eased as the day wore on. Racing on Saturday proved to be extremely close. The Burford School Team (Sam Goodchild, Rory Spriggs, Tom Altman, Sam Delo, and Nick Wilkinson) put in several good performances putting them in pole position for the racing on Sunday. The rest of the fleet, Kings & Lancs, Merchant Taylors, Ardingly School, Cambridge, Worcestershire and Derbyshire Youth Sailing, Queen Mary Sailing Club, Magdalen College School and Sevenoaks, chased hard in the to haul in the Burford team.

Sunday got of to a good start with the teams placed 7th to 10th starting their double round robin whilst teams 1 to 6 had just a single round. Racing was much closer on this second day as the teams became more familiar with the boats and with the benefit of a brief coaching session with Alan Baiser of the RYA after the first days racing. The sun even came out for the afternoon session completing the good conditions.

All races on the final day were hotly contested and there were several upsets along the way but Burford hung on to their first day form to win the gold fleet. Second place were Magdelen College School and third were Merchant Taylors. Winners of the silver fleet were Cambridge with Derbyshire in second.

The NSSA would like thank Mike Shaw from Fotoboat for his continued support at NSSA events.

This weekend was very successful at the NSSA Match Racing Championships which ended up with our team taking the title, but not as straight forwardly as it sounds. Seven teams turned up on the Saturday morning to start racing and after the briefings and a few delays we started racing. We had a good days racing, winning all our races, some by a big margin, and others only slimly, having to come from behind at the start, at the end of the day we were in pole position just in front of Magdalen College who had one all their races (but one) to us.

On the Sunday Morning there was much more wind and we started the day with one reef and no spinnakers. Through the morning and early afternoon, both magdalen and ourselves continued to win all our races. Due to various technicalities our last match was against magdalen, which acted as a Final, with the winner taking the title, now with spinnakers allowed. From our previous race we had noticed we were weaker in the pre start but faster up wind so than they were. With the nerves running high amongst most of the crew we entered the pre-start with the intention of starting ahead, as we did. Over the first lap there was not much change but, up the first beat we ironically started to loose in the tacks. Going round the last windward buoy we were just ahead and managed to keep it down the run as we rolled across the finish line, going very deep to avoid gybing in the strengthening wind.

Overall, we had a lot of fun this weekend and are obviously very pleased with the final result!

Sam