Cambridge win the Open 2024 Sailing Varsity Match but narrowly lose the Women’s 2024 match.
The 2024 Varsity Sailing Match was held in Lymington, sailing modern RS21 keelboats. The sun and wind turned up for the event, providing glamorous conditions for one day of practice followed by two days of racing. In a best of 7 series, both the open and women’s match aimed to swiftly win 4 races and back up our successful season winning both the open BUCS Team Racing and being the top university team at Women’s BUSA Team Racing Championship.
The open match featured 3 Cambridge boats each with 3 sailors in, including returning Blues Lucius Bligh (Captain, St Johns), Hannah Cox (Ladies Captain, Churchill), Gordon Cogan Sivarajan (Robinson), Tim Hire (Selwyn) and Ellen Morley (Newnham) alongside Charlie Merryweather (Homerton), Magnus Handley (Emmanuel), Blake Tudor (Selwyn) and Sam Dernie (Caius). The team started strong in the medium wind first day, winning the first race and going on to finish the first day with a 3-1 lead against Oxford. The second day featured more wind with the team showing superior boatspeed compared to Oxford. After a small blip losing the first race of the day, Cambridge won the 6th race to win the open varsity match 4:2.
The women’s match featured 2 Cambridge boats each with 4 sailors in, including returning Blues Hannah Cox (Ladies Captain, Churchill), Ellen Morley (Newnham) and Lisanne Blok (Murray Edwards) alongside Jenny Jiang (Ladies Captain, Murray Edwards), Charlotte Watson (St Johns), Claudia Bazyk (Magdelene), Mia Becker (Emmanuel) and Cassandra Shand (Christs). Featuring a 2 boat team racing format which puts the emphasis on controlling the opposition boats, the Cambridge team showed expertise ending the first day with a 3-2 lead. On the final day, the racing went down to the wire with Oxford levelling the score to 3-3 before Cambridge narrowly lost the match-winning race by a meter.
