Swansea edged out in sailing

Cardiff …………………………………5

Swansea ………………………………3

The Welsh Varsity sailing took place at Cardiff Yacht Club, where both teams were met with favourable sailing conditions down at Cardiff Bay.

The race was originally scheduled to start at 10:00am, but a series of technical faults and late arrivals meant that many of the boats didn’t even get into position until midday.

The race line-up was made up of six boats sailing simultaneously, and the winner was decided by adding together the finishing places of a team’s three boats – whichever team scored ten or below would win the race, and with only nine races, the first team to reach five wins would be the overall champion.

After a brief pause in order to fix the broken tiller of Swansea’s boat three, the teams set sail. Despite being shown a red flag, Cardiff won the first race with nine points, which came from their boats finishing first, second and sixth. They doubled their advantage soon after with a final score of eight to Swansea’s 13.

Swansea clawed back some ground in the second race with second, third and fifth place finishes respectively, and drew level with a score of ten, which came through first, fourth and fifth place finishes.

Despite the setback, Cardiff won the next two races with nine and ten point finishes, which brought the overall score to 4-2 and meant that Swansea had no room for error ├▒ another win would give Cardiff an unassailable lead.

Another red flag for Cardiff gave Swansea hope as their boats finished first, second and fifth in race seven, but Cardiff were not to be denied, and sealed the win in race eight with a set of second, third and fourth place finishes.

With no possibility of either a Cardiff clean sweep or a Swansea comeback, and having already been told to move by a Cardiff Bay patrol boat, the teams decided not to race for a ninth time.

“Credit to Swansea, it was the closest Varsity race I’ve ever been involved in,” confessed Cardiff captain Henry McLaughlin.

“It really could have gone either way at the end and I’m just glad we managed to do edge out the overall victory.”

Jacob Dirnhuber