Playoffs 2019

Yellow Team did us proud at Playoffs in Newcastle; Photo credits to Sarah Ramsey

With our three inclusive SSS events over, sailing started getting serious earlier in March at Playoffs. With Yellow team repping us, they headed off very early on the Saturday morning (literally at disgusting o'clock) to make it to Newcastle, but... wait... there was no social? ...GUSC must have started taking these events very seriously, because there is a severe lack of gossip.

On the first day of sailing our representative team got up to sail at Derwent Reservoir, which Zim and 2P both thought looked good enough to have a good dunk in after launching; with Zim having to man the dinghy until it drifted into shore. During the first race there were apparetly an awful lot of broken boats and a lot of huffiness as a redress had to be requested for a broken shackle and a resulting jib collapse.

During the second race against Dundee there were lots of green flags and exciting team tactics, which resulted in Dundee obtaining a 2-3-4 in very gusty, but exciting conditions.

The third race of the day was deemed as a "survival of the fittest" challenge, with Exeter converting a 2-3-4 into a 1-2-5 in heavy winds.

In the last race of the day before sailing was canned, GUSC decided to change from a sailing team to a swimming team, with some participants showing off their breast stroke as Cambridge overtook them to the finish.

There are a distinct lack of photographs taken at playoffs so here's one I found on Google of Derwent Reservoir; Photograph taken by "Derwent Reservoir Sailing Club"

(DIRECT QUOTE FROM SARAH ABOUT THE SATURDAY EVENING)

"Bus broke down, the crews were taken to the #mansion with Dundee while the boys waited for the AA to come and tell them it was unfixable."

The sailors went to a pub dinner, which was fun and on their way home they saw a frog get run over, which wasn't as fun!

They got an early night in their "REAL BEDS" and woke up bright and early on the Sunday for their second day of sailing. Unfortunately, the wind, true to form, was overenthusiastic and sailing was postponed until 10am. Glasgow launched in winds above 30 knots, but by the time the first gun went, it had dropped. Their first race was a resail against Bath, which Yellow unfortunately lost in a 3-5-6. They won their second race with a 1-2-5 despite a bit of a dead wind start. The third race was against Oxford, but some of the sailors got a bit of a fright from the posh english accents and crossed the line from the wrong side. The rest of the races went on with GUSC carrying out some smack downs, some protests and some more boat destruction; wins against Cambridge and Aberdeen meant that Glasgow finished 8th at Playoffs 2019.

You did excellently guys! Thank you 2P for providing a very indepth commentary throughout and to Newcastle Uni for organising everything!