Cumberland Cup 2025 at Royal Thames Yacht Club - Day 1
by Jack Fenwick 16 May 07:01 BST
15-17 May 2025
Day 1 of the Cumberland Cup 2025 at Royal Thames YC © Freddie Cardew-Smith / RYTC
The Royal Thames Yacht Club team lead by Murray Hampshire and Arthur Henderson made the most of the tricky Northerly winds to lead, undefeated, at the end of day one of the Cumberland Cup.
A brisk Northerly wind with some punchy gusts greeted the sailors for the first day of racing with Southern Yacht Club facing off against Corinthian Yacht Club and Gamla Stans racing against the hosts, RTYC in the first pair of races, Corinthian taking the honour of the first win and the Thames team taking their first win too.
For many of the teams, the gusty conditions meant a lot of the day was spent learning to race with new team mates but with each team getting 8 races in, the learning curve was steep and the racing tighter and tighter as the day went on. Early leaders, Seawanhaka Corinthian saw a hole in the wind near the top mark give the advantage to Eastern YC and with it their first loss in six races but manage to hold second place overnight just ahead of Corinthian Yacht Club who are tied with them.
The Royal Thames team put in a dominating performance but even they had to admit that the racing had been tough highlighted by their final race against Corinthian where most boats ended up sailing back down the final beat trying to secure that elusive winning combination.
After racing, the team from Gamla Stans enjoyed a post-race beer and lamented that, "we've had a great day, the arrangement is perfect, even if our sailing is not. Perfect courses and rapid fire races work really well and the umpires have been doing a great job at keeping the racing clean. We've been learning a lot very rapidly in the Sonars and we hope that this learning will continue tomorrow as our later races today were much tighter and tighter. Hopefully the sunshine from practice day will return tomorrow with the weather a little less Swedish."
New York Yacht Club captain Natalya Doris was reflective of their first day of racing: "we haven't sailed together as a team before so today was about getting the rust off and the flat-water and good wind was ideal for the Sonars. We've upped our game, especially through the middle of the day so we will definitely be back with a vengeance tomorrow".
All teams have now headed off for a reception at the houses of parliament where tales of races won and lost will be shared before getting a good night's sleep in to try and fight for the places in Saturday's Semi Finals.
Full results at events.ksail.co.uk/RTYC/2025/CumberlandCup