Hansa GUL VR Series 2020 - Week 1

Hansa GUL VR Series 2020 © David Durston

Hansa GUL VR Series 2020 Week 1 © David Durston

The first event of the Virtual Regatta series took place on Tuesday 21st April. There were 17 Hansa sailors in total, with entries from England, Scotland, Ireland and the Netherlands.

For the first time the sailors from the various Hansa fleets had an opportunity to pit their skills against others in the same class of boat, albeit virtually. A Zoom session was set up alongside the event so the sailors could enjoy the typical banter that you'd usually get when you're out on the water, as well as hearing exasperated outbursts when penalties were incurred. On the whole the no swearing rule was adhered to, but from time to time sailors were put on mute. This is a very useful feature of competing in this way, something that it would be great to have when we get back onto the water.

The first four races were run using a Star which is the closest to a Hansa dinghy with just a jib and main sail. The next four were raced using J70s which gave everybody an opportunity to get to grips with the different angles of downwind sailing with a spinnaker. Different exotic venues were chosen for each of the races which also threw up a range of different conditions and wind shifts. One thing of note was that none of the venues had the little or no wind conditions which we're often frustrated by as sailors.

It was clear from the start that some of the sailors had spent much more time than others getting to grips with the very different skills of controlling a computer or tablet. That said, the racing was very close with 7 different sailors getting a first place over the 8 races, Harry Kennington from Frensham Pond being the only person to achieve two.

For the series we have decided to use a points system, with the winner getting a score equal to the number of sailors who started the race. Over the series, the number of races to count will be 50% of the total number of races that everybody had an opportunity to enter. This enables us to run two pools if the number of sailors exceeds 20 on a given day. After the first event, taking 4 of the 8 races to count, Mike Everitt is in the lead with a Net score of 58. There are 3 sailors tied for 2nd place on 57 points: Rory McKinna, Harry Kennington, and Gerard Beens from Holland. There is all to play for, and with the number of discards allowed, there is still plenty of opportunity for people to hone their skills and get to the podium.

We look forward to week 2.

Overall Results: