Enterprise Open Tideway Pursuit - Graham Douglas' report
Sunday 19th June 2022 A unique race in the Enterprise 2022 calendar. Perhaps the spiritual home of the boat’s designer, Jack Holt, who was born in Hammersmith. A single class one-design pursuit race? How does that even work? Borrowing heavily from the format of SBSC’s Ruby Bell race, we planned to make the most of our tidal location and use the tide as the variable allowing competitors to decide on their own start time. A unique twist. We would then record each boat’s start and finish time and calculate a winner with the shortest elapsed time. The course was simple. Sail downriver to a single mark, leave the mark to port and return to the start/finish line. We allowed a starting window of one hour after the standard warning and preparatory signals. Never has so much bell ringing produced such little activity. We waited. Start too early and you risk arriving at the mark too early and effectively park up trying to push the tide on the return leg. Leave too late and the tide will have tur...