The Nottingham Snakebite 2017
by Iona Smith 1 Mar 2017 11:40 GMT
25-26 February 2017
Nottingham Snakebite Team Racing at Notts County SC © David Eberlin
On the 25th/26th of February, the University of Nottingham Sailing Club once again hosted Nottingham Snakebite at Notts County Sailing Club. Despite having to move away from the usual Valentine's weekend, the event as popular as ever with 20 teams attending from 8 different universities, 2 alumni teams and 1 school.
Pre-event, the Friday was extremely busy with the umpires and boats arriving from across the country and the students braving the cold at Notts County SC, finishing the final preparations at the club just in time to dash back to Nottingham to meet the teams they were hosting and go straight back out for the first social of the weekend.
The Saturday morning dawned bright and far too early as everybody (eventually) made it to the sailing club where hangovers and bacon sandwiches were abundant. In light of Storm Doris and the extremely windy forecast, the decision was made to switch to cut-downs and so racing started slightly later than planned, although it would prove to make little difference as the Round Robin was postponed at lunch time and, after two hours of waiting for the squall to blow through, would eventually be postponed until the next morning with just 37 races completed.
Everybody mucked in to get the boats packed away before heading home to get a much-needed nap before the second social of the weekend. With an overall theme of The Circus, there was an explosion of colour, glitter and clowns – and that was before the fancy dress was involved! A great night was had by all, although the remnants of face paint the next morning suggested that perhaps some people were regretting the late night.
Despite the fact that the wind had not dropped as much as hoped, it was a testament to the skill and punctuality of Race Officer Keith Sammons and Snakebite Organiser Ollie Thompson that the first race started at exactly 0930.
The morning would prove to be exciting as Loughborough Purple and Birmingham Black, the only two unbeaten teams, clashed in race 40 with Birmingham emerging from the race victorious. Their unbeaten streak was not to last as they were eventually defeated by the Nottingham Old Boys, meaning that when the Round Robin was eventually halted at race 80, every team had lost at least one of their 8 completed races.
The semi-finals consisted of the only four teams to have only conceded one race; Loughborough Purple, Cambridge Uni Men, Birmingham Off-White and Birmingham Black. In a best-of-three, Loughborough conceded defeat to Cambridge while the all-Birmingham semi-final 2 meant that the students (Birmingham Black) narrowly beat their alumni (Off-White). The final proved to be extremely exciting both teams battled the increasing wind before Cambridge emerged victorious with a 2-0 defeat over Birmingham Black.
Overall, the event was a huge success with only minor damaged caused (which was hastily fixed by the wonderful bosun, Ali Grant). We want to thank all of the volunteers from Notts County SC, the University of Nottingham SC and all of the teams who took part.
Lastly, a huge thank you must go to Race Officers, Keith and Jo, Ollie Thompson for organising the event, Ali Grant for acting as bosun, David Eberlin and Shannon Millard for acting as photographers, Chief Umpire Ed Sibson and umpires Richard, Paul, Steve, Carol, John and Jonny for braving the elements.
David Eberlin's photos from the event can be found here with Shannon's photos due to be uploaded to the Snakebite Facebook page in the coming days. Official results can be found at kSail here.