South Bank Sailing Club Blog

Sunday 24th July 2022 Today we set sail to start the downriver John Cope race. This consists of two races, one down river to about Battersea Park and the other from Battersea Park to SBSC. We started the first race with Peter just on the line, but Andrew, James and Jakob quickly caught up. Four minutes in, James was leading the race in his Solo, with Andrew and Jakob closely battling it out in their Lasers. It was quite a windy day so the whole way down favoured some incredible but difficult downwind sailing. Andrew, James and Jakob were neck and neck the whole way down, but James managed to seal the deal and take first place at the end of the first race. The race took about half an hour considering the favourable wind, so we had to wait about half an hour at Battersea Park before the tide turned. James and Jakob had the best start in the second race which started at 18:45 with Jakob heading the whole upwind leg back to SBSC. James, Andrew, and Peter closely followed. The exhaustion an...

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...

The last weekend of May was chosen for our rare, day-long upriver sail to the London Apprentice in Isleworth. A healthy 9-20kts conveniently coming from the north provided plenty of wind for a Laser, two Xenons and a GP14. The weather was cool and intermittently shady; overall nearly perfect weather for the job. Once all the boats were on the beach we launched our GP14 first, and beating happily in the fresh north wind, we were almost around the corner before the remaining boats were off the beach! Waiting at Hammersmith for 10 minutes to keep the fleet together, we defended our lead as hard as we could. Safety crew Justin and Lucy escorted Peter and Jakob’s Xenons under the bridges. Patrick’s laser passed us midway; the Xenons were closing in on us when we arrived. State of the art onboard telemetry (a.k.a. a cracked iPhone running Strava in a dry-bag) shows the GP14 completed the trip in a comfortable 2 hours (3kts VMG) with a top speed of about 6 kts. We were joined for 3 pleasant ...

28th May, 2022. The Race on Saturday commenced in near perfect conditions, with a sunny blue sky studded with clouds and a northerly wind blowing at strength of 6 knots. The race itself followed a triangular course with it’s most northerly mark by the Crabtree pub and the finish line at the clubhouse, though the start line was located up river. After a smooth launch for all seven of our racers and the safety boat, the race commenced at 12.59 pm. It was initially hard for the race observers at the clubhouse to determine how the race would play out with all participants initially holding quite close together. However, by the end of the second lap Jakob Grunig had secured a clear lead with Allan Munro-Faure and Eleanor Hanning following close behind him. This was the leading order as the race entered its second lap, unfortunately at this point a large number of lasers from the Ranelagh sailing club entered the area. The result was that the centre of the river became a confused mass of sai...

Sunday 8th May 2022 Race Officer: Luis and Bruce R. Safety Boat: Fleur and Agnes It was a lovely early evening for the first Bevington race of the series with 14 sailors and 13 boats competing; 4 Solos, 1 420, 1 Laser Radial and 7 Lasers .  Guided by Alan, Renato and Jakob a daring 3-point course was set extending from the mile point upriver to the Putney moorings downstream, with a rather ambitious 5 lap target. The wind forecast was 6 knots gusting 9, E/SE and high water at 20:30. It took some time to get ready as the buoys had to be repositioned to make the course sufficiently large for the sailor’s aspirations. One yellow buoy seemed to drift so Agnes and Fleur removed it promptly and we resorted to the permanent red one. The race started at 18:17 with a downriver start, a novelty welcomed by the sailors. The first boat to complete the first lap was Renato’s laser in just under 20 minutes, with Jakob (Laser) at his heels. Allan, and James Channer were next in their solos, followed ...

May Day Race Report Sunday 1 st  May 2022 Race Officers: Jane S & Andrea S Safety Boat: Sina S & Manuel A The May Day Race 2022 was created today! Due to little wind, strong current and unequal starting conditions, the RO decided that this first race of the summer season would not be part of the Bevington trophy series. There was very little wind – SW 5 gusting 10 knots forecast – but just enough to race.  At the briefing the course was set as 5 x sausage laps and 1x triangle allowing the competitors to choose the order in which they completed the laps.   We also added the proviso that if the wind dropped we’d reduce the laps and ask the Sina and Manuel to the SB team to finish the race from the safety boat. The eager competitors: Lasers – Jane D, Elaine, Patrick, Mike, Marco, and Ellie. Solos – Allan MF and James C. The wind picked up just before the race began and our sailors were making good time to get on the water. But then some rowers blocked the ra...

I arrived at the club a few minutes late on Sunday 14th to find a pleasantly surprising number of boats already out of the yard; some credited this to my dire warnings by email the day before, but personally I think that would be overestimating my influence over the sailors. 3.45pm is quite a late start for a downriver so I experimented with launching the two safety boats by winch (with mixed success; it does require fewer people, but takes just as long) and tried to fix my mistakes as fast as I could, eventually starting the race ten minutes late at 15:56. The brisk southerly wind made for a good upwind start, if a challenging launch for the less experienced crews; I’m led to believe James Channer got off to a great start in a Solo, and I know for sure he was first over the line at Battersea. The brisk wind plus a gentle ebb helped the fleet make it to Battersea in an average of just under an hour (a little over 3kts VMG, James leading with a strong 3.9) We got our phones out dur...