The Sailsport Exeter Excalibur team racing event hosted by Exeter University was held over the weekend of the 19th and 20th February 2005. The event included teams from Cardiff, Nottingham, Birmingham, Reading, Bristol, Bath, Exiles (Exeter Alumni) and Exeter.

The weekend was always going to be very cold but it was also unexpectedly windy when everyone arrived down on the Saturday morning to Roadford Lake. After a battle with drifting buoys, the first three races were sent out to start a round robin league with 2 flights of Fireflies and a flight of Laser 2?s. However, after a cut eyebrow and 4 capsizes in the unreefable Laser 2?s, the schedule took its first alteration, running with the reefed Fireflies only. The day then saw some good racing with the wind calming throughout the day, allowing the sailors to concentrate more on team tactics than staying dry!

Everyone drove back to Exeter at the end of the day for what some considered the real competition of the weekend, the infamous Saturday Lemmy! After some pub grub in the Ram, the sailors, most sporting team drinking tops, headed to the Lemmy for many a drinking game organised by the fantastic Social Secretaries, Chloe Kingham and Maude Harris.

Sunday morning at Roadford greeted the fragile and hungover with 20 knot of breeze (not what the doctor ordered!). After an hour?s postponement, the wind calmed sufficiently to get the racing under way in the Fireflies. The round robin was completed from the Saturday with Bristol Ladies looking very confident with 6 wins out of 6. Due to the lack of time and the emergence of snow in store for the teams travelling up North, racing was moved straight into a Gold knockout tournament, taking the top four teams from each league. One of the biggest surprise was the emergence of Exiles 1 into the semi finals after a lack-lustre performance in the round robin, they sneaked into the knockout by virtue of a re-sail and ended up with a great position of fourth overall. Exiles 2, a younger Alumni team came third, a great result but one could sense a little annoyance from a team with greater aspirations. The final was fought between Bristol Ladies and Nottingham, both with impressive records from the round robin. Nottingham triumphed in the end and took home the Exeter Excalibur award and we look forward to Nottingham defending their title next year!

There are many people to thank who made the event possible, Tony Blackmore from Sailsport brought his chandlery van along and very kindly performed many pitstop repairs to keep the event running, sponsored the event and awarded some great prizes to the top three teams. Martin Smethers made the trip down from a long way and added his great expertise to the umpiring team, Bath and Plymouth provided boats and of course, the Exeter Fresh and Steve Gibson who ran the event!
Results:
1st Nottingham
2nd Bristol Ladies
3rd Exiles 2
4th Exiles 1

Henry Maples

Photos From the Event

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