By Vita Heathcote

Our club RLymYC provided an awesome opportunity to get a group of keen and talented Lymington sailors into keelboat racing up against the best practiced teams in the British Keelboat League at the Finals. Our team consisted of me on the helm, Santi Sesto-Cosby on main, and siblings Oliver and Molly Dowson-McGill on the bow. Olly, Molly and I are ex-420 sailors and Santi from 29ers. Previously we were all experienced and competitive optimist sailors. We all loved sailing our junior youth classes and took it to a high level.

We weren’t sure quite what to expect as none of us had sailed in the BKL league before, let alone RS21s! Being versatile sailors and having experience in a range of classes, we picked it up pretty quick! With one practice day before getting straight into racing on the Saturday, it was a steep learning curve, but we all took it very chilled and knew we were good fleet racers in our own right so would at least be able to sniff out shifts and pressure in this unstable offshore condition. Day 1 was 15-20 knots, and we won the 1st race!

Considering we were by far the lightest team; we were buzzing to win a windy race. It also gave us confidence that if we could win in breeze then in the light winds it should come a bit easier!

We worked really well together in the boat; each of us bringing our own strengths to the team and bouncing of one another’s input; overall it was very calm in our boat considering we were no means smooth or practiced with any of our manoeuvres or boat handling!

The racing was short, fast paced and very tight between boats! Being used to longer races with larger fleets, we had to adapt our style and priorities for the races; focusing more on starts and controlling the fleet. Despite a couple of broaches and penalties on day 1, we were hanging on in a good position going into day 2; ready to pounce on the light winds! Putting in a 2,2,1,1 scorecard on Sunday put is to the top! How on earth have we done that??!! We all enjoyed racing in this different format and being able to use our skills as racers to handle the fleet. It was really exciting to win such a big event with very little practice! Thanks to RLymYC for supporting such a fun and successful weekend; clearly we have learnt from the best!

I’m sure we will seize more opportunities like this in the future, to learn from racing experience and sail in new teams, boats and events!

Vita Heathcote

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