Bloody Mary 2025

Published 23:16 on 18 Jan 2025

Margate sailors enter the Bloody Mary Pursuit Race.

A 7am start saw Antony, Graham and Heather heading to Staines for the Bloody Mary Pursuit race with 99 entries and 80 boats arriving on the day.

Weather forecast was 0-3 mph starting with -2 getting up to a whopping 2 degrees, fortunately the sun was shining, race start for the slow boats was 12 midday. First job was to rig Antony's new Osprey and try and clear the ice from the inside of the boat and all the ropes. On the second attempt we rigged it correctly.

The Pursuit race starts slower boats first gradually starting the medium and faster boats on a handicapped start time, we were in a queue for launching on a pulley system down the reservoir edge into the cold water, nice not to have to wade out to sea before sailing. The Toppers started first with a menagerie of boat classes to the fastest boat an A class Thames Rater with a 44.5 foot mast, over double the height of a Wayfarer mast, and length of 27 feet. We started 47 minutes after the Toppers and tacked after the start to some breeze we could see on the water out to the left, this brought us slowly to the first mark having caught up with some other classes, then around mark 2 and hoist the spinnaker, this is the first time we have sailed this boat and the brand new spinnaker looked a strange shape not setting properly. Upon gybing Antony asked, "is this spinnaker rigged correctly", oops Graham had connected it sideways, with the clew on the head etc. so down the run Antony is on the foredeck re-rigging the kite as we race alongside faster boats catching us and slower boats being caught, exciting stuff. Then the wind died completely with slow and fast craft drifting at the same speed towards the finish time.

All in all a really fun day, Antony not happy leaning out to leeward all day instead of out on the wire as he said "I am not used or happy being on this side of the boat", the new boat does not take in any water and is lovely to sail...!

We finished in 56th place, a poor result, but apparently racing against many National and world champions in a variety of classes.

Big thanks to Heather for all her help and support, we had a really fun day.

Last updated 23:16 on 18 January 2025