This year we eschewed the rigours of match racing in the Belvidere Cup and, showing some solidarity for Peter Qish's stint at the helm of the Arrow Trophy organisation, we took part in the ATRYA J80 fleet race at Queen Mary SC. We had a great crew line up with apprentice bow man Larry Plant and experienced hand Rob Mitchell figuring out what happened with all those bits of string attached to the spinnaker and veteran Finn champion Mike Stringer on the main sheet and helping me with tactical advice.  We were racing three other boats from Uppingham, Norwich and Rodean. For some reason Peter had got himself a seat on the Rodean boat…

We had spent the previous week worrying about the large high sitting over Northern Europe but on the day in brilliant sunshine the wind gusted to about 10 knots. Much of the time it was fluky and shifty which made for great racing. Race 1 saw us off with a good start, scraping Uppingham off at the committee boat and rounding the top mark first. As we hoisted the kite, the wind died and then filled in to help the other boats catch up. We managed to get out of their wind shadow and came second. Race 2, we had a great start but the fleet split behind us and we failed to cover Uppingham who got a lift and passed us at the top mark…but we held onto that for another second. Race 3 followed the same pattern and by now it felt like there were two mini-fleets; us and Uppingham with the two other boats far behind. 

The lady running the race then decided she was getting dizzy and it was time for us to do a downwind start passing all the buoys to starboard. This time we had a superb start and were miles ahead of everyone including Uppingham. We were sitting back admiring our commanding position when we heard the committee boat beeping as each other boat passed it. We had not realised that this race was only one lap so that lead became a 4th. Next race we had a pretty good start and once again it was Uppingham and Pangbourne heading for the first mark with Uppingham having the inside overlap. The crew brought in the kite and pulled sheets tight for a convincing overtake as Uppingham floundered in our wake. We stayed ahead all the way around until the final set of marks when, confident that we were close enough to go for the mark we failed to cover Uppingham and they got a huge lift to overtake and once again it was a second place. 

The last race was, finally, a disaster at the start with appalling decisions made by the helm! Uppingham, ignoring the two other boats pushed us outside the pin end with the spinnaker flying and there was no way to go back into the wind (bear in mind this was another downwind start); So we had to drop spinnaker, tack back upwind to the start and cross the line 30 boat lengths behind. We finished a convincing 4th.

Our result was a disappointing 3rd as we came one point behind Norwich but this really didn't reflect a fantastic fight with Uppingham in each race. It would have been super close had we not made three simple mistakes. We had dominated the start in every race except the last. Boat speed was good and at times excellent.  Our mark rounding had a very seamanlike manner about it. Tactical decisions had been sound apart from a couple of lapses. Our spinnaker work was miraculously good considering neither Rob nor Larry had had any practice. 

We are now definitely at the level of racing where 'he who makes the least mistakes wins' rather than previous depressing episodes where we have left the QM reservoir wondering how to make the boat go. So onwards and upwards and very much looking forward to the Arrow Trophy proper in October.