Article by Dale Knowles
Over the Bank Holiday weekend, Matthew attended his first Tera Nationals at the National Sailing Academy at Weymouth and Portland.
The event was originally planned to be held over the whole of the Bank Holiday weekend at Royal Torbay Yacht Club, but owing to space limitations there and the need for social distancing, the club pulled out and WPNSA came to the rescue at the last minute with a two day event over the Monday and Tuesday. All 100 places were snapped up within three hours of being made available online and a slight increase in the entry to deal with the oversubscription resulted in a total of 107 entries made up of 44 Pro rigs and 63 Sport rigs (Pros are fully battened laminate sails and bigger than the white and orange sails of the Sports).
We arrived on Sunday afternoon just as registration opened and were greeted by glorious sunshine, a nice breeze and plenty of eager kids ready to go out for a practice. Matthew didn’t need much encouragement to join them and we quickly readied his boat enabling him to get out for a familiarisation session. This really steadied his nerves as it allowed him to experience the venue, getting in and out and obviously, the race area itself, which is massive – even though they were sailing just within Portland Harbour.
Returning on Monday morning, we were faced with the same sunny weather and slightly lighter but sailable conditions. The race management team did a great job of getting the fleet away helped enormously by the sheer scale of launching slipways, and off they sailed into the distance.
Watching them was tricky from the shore and it was with a bit of doubt that we thought we spied Matthew through the binoculars in the top ten on the first lap – but indeed it was him, and he managed to work his way up to 5th at the finish – a really pleasing first race at his first Nationals.
They did another three races back to back that day with Matthew scoring 39, 33 and another 39; a long day on the water in the sunshine and a testing light breeze, but not a bad day in the office. As they were coming in, I spotted local lad and Olympic team member Stu Bithell getting his Moth ready ahead of their Nationals the following week. Stu was kind enough and have a photo and a chat with Matthew as he came ashore, which really capped off a great first day.
Day 2 (Tuesday) was again sunny with another four races scheduled, but an even lighter breeze. The fleet left the shore and just about reached the starting area on time, but the conditions were proving difficult for the PRO to set a course as the prevailing wind was meeting the building sea breeze head on. Predictably, this battle went on for a few hours as they tried and aborted a number of starts, then got one start away but abandoned the race half way up the first beat. In the end, the PRO called it a day and sent the fleet home, which was a bit of a shame particularly as one more race would have introduced a discard and probably would have meant Matthew improving on his 27th position.
It was not to be, but it was a great first Nationals for Matthew, with the added bonuses of being held at the UK’s Olympic venue, and also meeting one of the Olympic team.
