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We are sad to announce the passing of another club member, Roger Palmer (Jesus 1961) died at the end of January. Roger represented the university in the sailing team, and later was commodore of Hayling Island Sailing Club as well as President of the Flying Fifteen Class.
It with great regret that we report the death of Richard Thompson (Selwyn 1961). Richard was a great supporter of the club, regularly returning to umpire at many Cam Cups and Varsity matches, as well as other adhoc events. He was also a huge supporter of team racing and sailing in general, serving as principal officer of the UK Team Racing Association until 2022 and he had previously chaired both the Team Racing Working Party and Racing Rules Working Party at World Sailing. He was a huge driver behind the modern team racing rule book - there isn’t a rule in Appendix D that wasn’t thoroughly scrutinised and challenged by him in a way only a Cambridge lawyer could. Richard received a RYA volunteer award from the Princess Royal in 2021. The RYA have written a tribute on their website.
The weekend of the 3rd and 4th of February held the first BUSA event of the year: the Midlands BUCS/BUSA Qualifiers. The three current Cambridge teams: Blue, Purple (2s) and Pink (3s), attended, all hoping to make it through to the finals, which we are hosting at Grafham in April. The top 4 teams from Qualifiers gain a place in Finals, and in our region (the Midlands), placing 5th to 7th gains your team a place at the Playoffs event in March. The the top 7 Playoff teams also then qualify for the Finals.
On the 27th of January, Cambridge Blue had a luxurious 4:30 am wakeup, ready to drive to Spinnaker Sailing Club to compete in the 2024 Wessex Winter Warmer. After a long 3 hour sleep in the car for most members of the team, we arrived at Spinnaker to find a stereotypical lack of wind. This allowed us all to get another few hours sleep in the carpark. Luckily, racing was only postponed for a few hours, By 10:30 the wind had filled in and we were able to start racing. The strong entry list comprised of mainly alumni teams, so we were prepared for a tough weekend of racing. This prediction was correct, and Blue enjoyed very close racing with some of the best teams in the country on Saturday. This would leave us with a fair amount of work to do on Sunday. Racing finished on Saturday after 88 races. Considering the late start this was a very impressive feat from Keith and Jo Sammons. Due to the good forecast for Sunday, the plan was to continue with the HLS for a few more races before moving into leagues and eventually knockouts.
Cambridge Sailing and Board Sports of All Kinds
The Cambridge University Cruising Club (CUCrC) is the home of every sort of small craft sailing at the University – dinghies, boards, foils, and small keel boats.