Oxford takes Credit Suisse Warwick Turtle 2011

Saturday, January 29th saw the start of the 2011 Warwick Turtle, sponsored by Credit Suisse. We were faced with a good breeze for Saturday and 21 eager teams ready to race. The style of sailing practiced at university level is called team-racing, and calls into play an acute awareness of the rules as well as great team-work and boat handling. Teams are divided into 3 boats of 6 people and unless the team works seamlessly and coherently, your chances of winning are severely diminished. The race format was a round-robin style schedule of 3 pools of 7 boats in each, meaning that each team races everyone else within their pool. After the completion of a 63 race series, racing for the day was done with West Kirby, Oxford and Plymouth at the top of their respective pools. With the forecast set to be light for day 2, to the degree that it may not be sailable, the decision was made to remain flexible with two different race schedules depending on the wind. As luck would have it, Sunday dawned with a wind-less lake and so the racing was postponed to wait for it to fill in. We adjusted the race schedule so a king-of-the-hill style format was used: this is essentially a knock-out progression in which you stop racing as soon as you lose. After a testing day for the race committee with an abundance of necessary postponements and re-starts, the final results were Nottingham 1 in 3rd and Warwick Alumni in 2nd with Oxford in 1st, taking home the first Credit Suisse Trophy for 2011.

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