The Sunsail Final 2009

When: 7th Nov 2009

Where: The Solent, England

The Sunsail final is the culmination of eight weekends of racing through the year: the top three teams in each of the Sunsail regattas in the Spring Summer and Autumn get to race each other at the start of November.

This was only the third time that a London Business School crew have qualified for the final: Bruce Clibborn's victorious student crew did it in 2006, Klaus & Co managed it in 2008 and again in this year's Alumni Challenge regatta.

- hopefully we'll get a report from that weekend soon! (hint hint)

Unfortunately, only Ingrid Van Wees was available of the crew that came in a marvellous third at the Challenge. The rest of the crew, including three racing virgins, were pulled together at the last minute during the week and we were looking at enjoying the race and "not coming last".

Ingrid (Insead Alum!) moved from the foredeck to the helm, and was joined by Bojan Risovic (MBA 2010) on main, Rupe Man (MBA2009), as navigator/downwind grinder, Johannes Tnsobin (IE Alum!) on trim, Brendan Laing (JEMBA2010) as Grinder, Jesus Rodriguez (MBA2003) on Piano, Rob Cotterill(MBA2004), skipper/mast and Mike Clancy(MBA98) as Bow.

The wind started the day at a steady 15 knots and built gradually through the day, so that the last race saw 18-20 kts, gusting 25 - at the top end of spinnaker weather.

We had two great races: Excellent starts, reasonable beats to the top mark and pretty good spinnaker work. We came in 9th in Race 1 ands 12th in Race 2 - losing places with a navigation error, put down to a very dodgy GPS, and my own slow thinking. Race 3 started equally well and we were in a strong position at the Gybe mark, where things went badly wrong: A spectacular wrap of the spinnaker and pole-up line around the forestay. We decided to abandon the race after 10 minutes unsuccessful de- wrapping, and it took us half way back to Portsmouth before the forestay was clear.

A fantastic day's racing. We raced hard despite our scratch crew and came out smiling with not one sense of humour failure, despite the confusion and shouting that come with a wrap like that and the noise of the wind and sails.

See you all on the water in the new year!

Rob