The Ceilidh Cup 2015

This was the first year in a long time that Edinburgh had sent a team to the Ceilidh Cup, so we decided to hedge our bets and send two! This event was the SSS Yachting Match Racing event of the year and ran as a round robin tournament.

The event got off to a slow start with not much wind at all, this allowed the Chief Umpire to give a talk on how to match race which was ideal as neither of the Edinburgh Teams had done much Match Racing at all.

Once the wind eventually filled in, Edinburgh B had a challenging first afternoon where we raced the RNCYC team (last year’s Ceilidh Cup champions) and the Dundee team. While we lost both of these races, we weren’t too fazed as their helms had sailed the Sonars much more than any of us had. Putting our losses behind us we went on to successfully win our next two races.

We woke up the next morning rather bleary eyed after camping on the freezing West Coast. 1/10 would not recommend to a friend. On the Sunday Edinburgh A had all 8 of their races to do and Edinburgh B had just 4 left.

There was more wind and there was some good racing done by all the teams. Edinburgh A and Edinburgh B had a very close race with the spinnakers flying. Edinburgh B ended up winning all their races that day while the A team had some close racing, winning 4/8 races.

The final results found RNCYC as the overall winners of the Ceilidh Cup. Dundee were the top student team, followed by Edinburgh B who were equal on points with Dundee (won 6/8 races) but lost in the individual race with them. Edinburgh A ranked 4th student team. It was a fantastic weekend with lots learned and it was great come back with two solid results for the Sailing Club in our first event of the session without any time for training.