Abbey and Evie’s Blog – Tiger Trophy

This weekend we attended the Tiger Trophy at Rutland Water, this was in aid off the John Merricks trust. We were also joined but Sam and Michael Dyer who are both Ex KSSA sailors, sailing a 29er.

On Saturday it was planned to go out and complete 3 races. However due to the forecast they posted a half hour postponement. At the point we were told too launch it was about 25-35 knots, and too prepare for this weather we maxed out our rake and went down to rake 4 to try to de-power our sail as much as we could. As we arrived on the course we found it was definitely a lot stronger (after we were told it was actually 30-40knots). We started the first race and made it up the beat rounding the mark along with most of the other 420s. As we made it around the bottom mark we were caught in a gust and ended up capsizing, after righting the boat we capsized again about 100 meters later. As our jib was cleated it meant each time we bought the boat up it then rolled over us. After help from one off the safety crew we ended up retiring and sailed in. When we made it ashore Brian then told us that over half the fleet had also retired. There were also many boats who ended up with ripped sails and holes in their boats.

At the end off the day we joined the rest off the sailors and had a meal which was in aid off raising money for the John Merricks trust. We then sat around and played cards which tends to be what we do when we have time to waste.

On Sunday we had the pursuit race, when we first launched the wind was quite light and so we went out on rake one, as we were out there waiting for our time we decided to go to rake two (which we are very glad we did as the wind ended up building to 19-30 knots) our first beat we struggled to get the boat moving properly but as we carried on around the course we felt ourselves getting back into the rhythm and it felt much better to sail. We ended up over taking a lot off the slower boats and still had a few 420s behind us. We ended up coming 38th out of around 130 boats.

It was a great weekend sailing against many different types off boats , and many very experienced sailors , we would strongly recommend for KSSA sailors to attend next year.