Once again, the magnificent members of the Edinburgh University Sailing Team found themselves embarking upon a journey of adventure and self-discovery, in Glasgow. Bags were packed refreshments purchased, and transport boarded.

 After a Friday of wild dancing, Saturday morning dawned to the sound of twenty four sailors eager for a day of sailing. Food was foraged, and the teams found themselves gazing onto a glassy loch. After much delay and only a couple of wind dances, racing started and by the end of the day a round had been completed.

A-Team, led by James Archibald Logan, performed like the well-oiled machine that they are. Winning the majority of their races in the Platinum Fleet only finishing third after the frustrating math of a three-way-tie-breaker. Their only loss to Glasgow A involved a powerboat driving though the race course. Their last race against Strath A was a stressful affair involving the conversion of a 2-4-5 into a 2-3-5 at mark four and over the course of the last beat, to narrowly carry the race.

The B-Team crushed all before them! (With the exception of Aberdeen A) Brendan Teddy Lynch and Naomi Tiffany Fallows sailed predictably aggressively. Calum Finlayson and Charles Reginald Williamson proved invaluable in holding out opposition boats on the beat. Jenny Kate Dinwoodie engaged in some of the most excruciatingly polite team racing SSS has ever seen. The end of racing found B-Team sitting second in Gold Fleet.

Led by Edward Dowes the Great, and Patrick Bard; C-Team completely fudged it. Sophie Goodrich did her best to Titanic her firefly off the pontoon, thankfully the boat was patched with tape and managed to finish the day. C-Team – despite their impressively complicated system of code-words – finished the day in Silver Fleet. Ever defiant, C-Team left the loch vowing to win the social.

 Under the leadership of the Cian Ryan the D-Team sailed outstandingly. The team made up almost entirely of team racing rookies won four of their five races. This placed them second in Silver Fleet. The D’s day culminated in a tense final race, in which they converted a 1-5-6 into 1-4-5  following a very tense tacking battle on the final beat.

The sun rose on Sunday and our intrepid sailors were once again greeted by frost, and a loch made of glass. The wind this day did not fill in. However, Sunday was not a total write off as many members of teams enjoyed ‘a lovely country walk’ or a ‘muddy tromp around a field.’ Perspective is everything. Recoveries were made, awards handed out, and all teams returned to Edinburgh triumphant.

As part of our participation in The Green Blue Sustainability Challenge, we have outlined 5 top tips for sustainable boating! You can follow these tips to join us in trying to protect the areas where we sail.

1. Use reusable water bottles in order to reduce waste and prevent littering. We use reusable water bottles at all of our training and race sessions and make sure that we’ve tied them to the boats to stop them falling out in the event of any hairy capsize moments.
2. Clean, Check and Dry all of your kit and your boats before and after sailing at a different venue. At EUSC we abide by the Clean, Check, Dry system whenever we travel to sailing events or transport boats between lakes in order to prevent the spread of invasive, non-native species.
3. Save fuel by driving not driving at excessive speeds in the powerboats. Driving at slower speeds will not only help to conserve fuel (and money), but will also reduce the disturbance for local wildlife.
4. Use a funnel or safety fill nozzle to prevent spillages when refueling RIBs. In case of spills, make sure that you have a spill kit handy and that all RIB users how to use it.
5. When cleaning your boat or kit, make sure that you’re using environmentally friendly cleaners. We know your wetsuits can get pretty toxic but that doesn’t mean that the cleaners that you use have to be too!

On the 12th of November EUSC Yachting sent a new team all the way south to Southampton to compete in the SunSail series final which the 2016 BUCS yachting team had won entry for earlier in the year.

After arriving in the land of the ‘down south’ people very early of Saturday morning and had a quick 6 hours sleep they were ready to roll heading down to the boats to get sorted for the days racing. Along with our team of 7 EUSC sailors we were joined by 2 professional sailors to help us learn fast and race well with a new team that had not worked together before. Robbie and Pete were both very useful and taught us lots which helped our boat handling come together very quickly.

We arrived at the race area with a strong 20+ knots of wind blowing from the South East, however even in the time leading up to the 1st race the trend was that the wind was dying very rapidly. In the 1st race the tactician on board may have slightly missread the tide (in one of the most tidal venues in the world) and as a result of this the team crosses the start line about 1 boat length behind the rest of the fleet which immediately put us in a firefighting position looking for quick escapes to tack out and find a clean lane. Following a very shifty beat we managed to gain back several places to 8th. As the race progressed the wind continued to die and by the final beat we had 2 or even 3 people on the leeward rail to try and keep the heal on the boat! Despite the team sailing well we struggled to fight back to a great position due to the dying wind and a lack of boat speed.

Race 2 had a better start and were powering out to the left hand side of the course and most things were looking pretty sweet in a top 5 position then taking the long tack in to the mark we realised we were going really slow compared to other boats which was being made worse by the dying wind and increasing the speed differences between us and other boats. Half way down the 1st run someone chirped up with, I think the water tanks are still full (900kg of water)! So we had to run down and open all of the taps and empty out all of the water.

After the finish of race 2 the wind properly died and racing was abandoned leaving the team feeling a bit disheartened that we had forgotten to check the water tanks.

On the Sunday after a lovely evening in the quaint town of Hamble with everyone in bed nice and early ready for a full day of training on Sunday we headed out with the main focus for the training to be on boat handling. We had a great day in the sun and plenty of breeze working on our crew work and manoeuvres.

Overall we had a great weekend unfortunately not getting the result we came for due to a rookie error and some non-obliging wind but still learned lots and had plenty of fun ready for out next challenge.

We would also like to give a special thanks to Suzy’s mum for providing massive quantities of amazing food for us to enjoy over the weekend.