Sesca has won a trophy!

A happy but exhausted band of Sesca sailors departed Little Paxton Lake last weekend (July 11/12) in proud possession of the Paxton 24 hour charity race trophy for the best visiting team.

The event is an annual fundraiser for the RNLI hosted by Little Paxton Sailing Club. The participating clubs, Paxton, Welwyn Garden City and Sesca, each fielded two or three teams racing their boats against each other; in our case the Enterprise team and a kind of ‘Sesca affiliated’ team of Laser Vago enthusiasts.

The event was, as usual, won by Little Paxton’s unassailable Solo sailors, with their strong Kestrel team taking second. Third place was ours, in the Enterprise, after dramatically battling our way from seventh place in the opening hour to beat Welwyn’s Supernova in the 24th hour by 1.6 laps (corrected time). Given the fact that the race involved over 129 corrected laps for us, this was a pretty close run thing.

The mentally nimble reader will immediately query who on earth was helming and crewing in the first hour to only manage seventh place (ie losing to everyone except a pair of school children in a Pacer). It was Andrew and Neville, and they can be forgiven, since it is hard to race an Enterprise when the mast falls off. With all eyes now turning to those who rigged the boat in the first place, may Carl and I assure you that we will never, ever, forget to put the split rings back into the shroud pins again.

Moving (unlike Andrew and Neville) swiftly on, it was certainly a weekend with a lot of weather in it. We had cold spells, hot spells, cloud, blazing sunshine, showers, torrential rain, no wind, light winds, strong winds and capricious gusting winds – individually and in various combinations of the above. Grown men were spending longer deciding what to wear for a shift than a teenage girl spends getting ready to go out.

But the weather, and the fact that it was us, meant the sailing was really exciting. I say this because regulars like the Solo team must watch our antics with envy. They sail around with great skill, pretty much knowing they are going to win, in a boat that shrugs off capsizes with indifference and can be relied on to stay in one piece.

We are always battling the odds. We always seem to be racing nip and tuck with the Supernova right up to the wire. We always seem to have to sail the last stages full tilt into the teeth of a howling gale, knowing that if the Enterprise capsizes the Supernova will beat us. And we always have to cope with a boat that has a mischievous predilection for breaking things.

Dismasting aside, the catalogue of problems fixed on the run this year, whilst simultaneously trying to race, included centreboard handles that fell off, a snapped toe strap bungee, a jury-rigged system of holding the centre board down and a rudder with a mind of its own.

All of the above makes the Paxton 24 hour race such fun to participate in. Between us, we not only cope, but we do pretty well. Us, by the way, this year comprised: Andrew, Carl, Caroline, Gary, Gerald, Mike, Neville, Nick, Richard, Rowena, Ted (with his Vago colleagues Paul, Ian and Hannah) and me.

Next year is the 40th anniversary of the Paxton 24 hour race and they want even more teams to participate to celebrate such a milestone. For those considering the possibility, what might you expect?

I spent six hours crewing two different boats with three fast and fearless helmsmen. This was an interesting experience, as one of them has a tendency to communicate his intentions solely through eye contact and barely perceptible nods; another sails a Vago, which requires a degree in engineering to understand all the ropes and pulleys; and the third does not consider any jibe or tack a success unless the boat has lurched through 180 degrees from gunwale to gunwale. It was with this one that I learned that the human body is not designed to balance a semi-submerged boat in a gale whilst simultaneously managing a jib and frantically baling out 100 gallons of water before the next jibe mark.

A further three hours was spent doing various duties such as time keeping, safety boat crew or galley duty in the genial company of other participating team members.

Some three hours were spent dozing fitfully in a tent during a downpour.

This left about 12 hours for drinking beer, eating barbecues, watching the race and generally joking around with the rest of the team.

Alternatively, of course, I could always have stayed home, mowed the lawn and gone to Tesco’s.

Alan Shaw