Thames Valley Challenge 2016 Race Report
Saturday saw the culmination of months of planning, the 2016 Thames Valley Challenge, a youth and junior team racing event in RS Fevas. This is an annual event that is rotated between the local sailing clubs, and this year it was the turn of Reading Sailing Club to host the event ably supported by Goring SC.
10 teams took part, consisting of 60 plus competitors. That, along with almost 40 helpers in terms of race crew, rescue boats, umpires, ferry boat drivers, shore crew, galley crew etc.. plus spectators, meant that well over a 120 people were on site, making this one of the biggest if not the biggest event held at the club.
Reading SC entered two teams, with Reading 1 consisting of 3 boats with William, Joe and Ben as helms and Thomas, Alex and Sam as crew. Reading 2 had Milo, Louis and Rhys as helms and Kate, Dylan and Rory as crew.
For those unfamiliar with the concept of team racing, the idea is that each team races each other in a series of short ~10 minute races. Individual scores don’t matter, it is the team result that counts. Tactics, using the racing rules to gain an advantage to hold up a competitor’s boat to let one of your team boats through, play a big role. Races occur back to back, with 3 minute start sequences. The go for the first race is the 3 minute signal for the next and so on. Boat crews are changed over on the water once they have completed their particular set of races. So the whole event runs like (or is meant to) a sausage machine – which takes a lot of pre-planning and co-ordination from all the various event teams. So this is a lot for the children to take on board (as well as some of the adults!) particularly those new to team racing.
Conditions were sunny, but with a challenging force 4 gusting 5 from the west. After the various briefings for the event teams and the competitors the Fevas went out with their smaller mains, reefed from the get go with the first race kicking off just before 10.00 am.
At about half way through the day, with each team having sailed about 5 races, Reading 1 led the pack having won 4. Reading 2 had yet to win a race, but given the stiff wind conditions and the relative inexperience, and the light weight crews, they were going very well to keep going and to keep the boats upright. Milo helming in Reading 2, deserves a special mention for coming first and second in a number of his races – a great result for his first go at team racing.
The day finished on race 40, just 5 short of the full schedule of 45, each team having raced 8 races. This itself is a record as far as Thames Valley Challenge is concerned with most years not getting much beyond 30 races- so a triumph for the start boat ! The final results revealed some very close racing with two teams tying for 1st place with 6 wins out of 8, and 4 teams for 3rd place each with 5 wins, including Reading 1. This took some careful reading of tie breaking rules before the Principle Race Officer came to the final adjudication below (ably advised by Paul R).
Congratulations go to Dorchester for pipping Goring Girls at the post on the tie-break and taking first place. As you might expect there was a bit of a grudge match going on between Goring Girls and Goring Boys. I think the girls were very pleased that they came ahead of the boys. Reading 1 unfortunately lost out in the 3rd place tie-break and ended in 6th place based on average points scored. But as you can see it was close racing. Reading 2 didn’t manage to win a race, but as before given that this was their first time out in team racing and the challenging conditions, they all did very well and show much perseverance to keep going – augers well for future events.
Selected photos for the event below. Thanks again to all the teams that turned up and a special thanks to all the helpers from Reading SC, Goring SC and the other clubs that made the event the success it was.
| Thames Valley Challenge 2016 Results | ||||
| Position | Team | Wins | Tie Break | |
| 1 | Dorchester | 6 | Add. H3a Dorchester beat Goring Girls when they met | |
| 2 | Goring Girls | 6 | Average Points | |
| 3 | Goring Guys | 5 | Add. H3c Teams having not all met, tie broken by the sum of points scored in all races divided by the number of races sailed. | 9.25 |
| 4 | Maidenhead | 5 | 9.38 | |
| 5 | Silverwing 1 | 5 | 10.25 | |
| 6 | Reading 1 | 5 | 10.75 | |
| 7 | Sliverwing 2 | 4 | ||
| 8 | Upper Thames | 3 | ||
| 9 | Goring Greats | 1 | ||
| 10 | Reading 2 | 0 | ||
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