Christmas Eve Team Racing at Waldringfield Sailing Club
by Neil Collingridge 27 Dec 2025 06:15 PST
24 December 2025
After weeks of unseasonably mild temperatures and gentle breezes it was perhaps predictable that we would wake up on Christmas Eve morning to windows rattling in their casements as it blew old boots straight out of the East.
20 knots gusting into the 30s and enough wind chill to scare a brass monkey into putting its kit away. Other than the North Sea and bits of Denmark there's not a lot separating Waldringfield from the Siberian wastelands. If a couple of us hadn't already spent a day collecting and launching ribs in preparation (Thankyou McKellar / Wootens and Bushes for bringing your ribs out of hibernation) we might have been tempted to get back under the duvet and call it all off. But the youth of today has to be listened to; their logic may appear wonky to those of an older generation but sometimes it's difficult to refute, and so it was that Angus pronounced it was "more or less sailable", and anyway everyone wanted to go to the pub so we should push on and abandon if needed.
Earlier in 2025 Waldringfield acquired a flight of 6 Fireflys from Glasgow University with the aim of establishing team racing activity on the Deben. It's pay-to-play sailing and designed for everyone to have a go - in 2026 we will have an inter-class competition (what price some wily Wayfarers versus the seadog Squibs?) but it's proving particularly popular with younger members many of whom will head off to University having now acquired some vital team racing skills. There's plenty more to be done to really get things well established but after 9 sessions through 2025 we identified the opportunity to run a low-key event on Christmas Eve when so many young and/or ex-members would be driving home for Christmas. It was like herding cats in the days leading up to the event working out who was or wasn't really committed to come - some had been signed up by their mates without even being told they were on the list... but in spite of the freezing cold we had a fantastic 26 sailors turn up, enough for 4 teams of 6 with a couple of spare crews for when peoples' extremities started falling off. Oversubscribed is a nice problem to have.
The cold easterly allowed us to run a team racing inverted-S course right in front of the Waldringfield Boatyard - a big thankyou to them as it meant we could do rib changeovers from the pontoon without getting wet. The wind had moderated just a notch or two but it was still pretty full-on despite reefed mainsails on the Club Fireflys. A double round-robin where each team sailed every other team twice was quite enough to find some worthy winners.
Amongst the sailors there were 2 world champions, 7 or 8 national champions and a couple of British Sailing Team sailors so, whilst not all of them were experienced team racers, the standard of sailing was not too shabby and was certainly very competitive. One family - mine - likened it to a waterborne, festive game of Monopoly with the inevitable family arguments to come; another, Jamie and Bee Harris got back in a boat together for the first time in ages (cadet worlds in Garda 2015?) and so avoided just such an issue. I think I counted 5 families with more than one representative sailing. After around 3 hours of racing it was soon getting dark, the tide was on the turn and we had to get the ribs recovered... and anyway someone had said earlier that the whole point was an excuse to get to the Maybush. So having completed the 2 round-robins we called it a day and went to warm up.
Great fun, thrills and spills, traps, mark 3 sweeps, spins, a few black flags; even the odd capsize. To the victors the spoils - Team 2 prevailed (Angus/ Flora, Hattie/Immy/Max, Alex/ James) with one more race win than teams 1 and 3 (tied on race wins and with a win each on their head-to-head encounters - I need a more sophisticated scoring system to split them) and team 4 bringing up the rear. And so into the Maybush Pub where Im sure the winners were supposed to buy the first round... it was heaving in there and great to see so many Club members turning up to have a watch and join in the craic. They were the sensible ones leaving their buoyancy aids in the cupboards and staying warm and dry.
Looking forwards there's plenty of planning to do - more team racing sessions through the season, a repeat trip to the Eric Twinane Championships, an inter-class team racing event to organise and hopefully come September a little jaunt up north with a full double stacker for the Southport 24hour race. We thing this team racing on Christmas Eve might even become a thing and in the spirit of team racing events with silly names we'll call it the Maybush Mince Pie next year. All we need is to continue the enthusiasm and for more people to give team racing a try and join in the fun.