The Imperial Icicle

Last weekend saw Imperial Sailing host its annual team racing competition: the Imperial Icicle at Queen Mary Reservoir.

With twenty different teams from across the country and two teams from Dublin filling Travelodges, Airbnbs, and friends’ floors on the Friday night, it was set to be the largest competition in the club’s history. 

Saturday saw us get through a hundred races, with a start almost every three minutes, thanks in large part to our alumni’s efforts in streamlining the race scheduling process with the development of imperialicicle.com. Competitors would often hear a drone buzzing overhead collecting valuable race footage, and it was a common sight to see competitors crowded around in the club cafeteria reliving their winning conversions. The afternoon brought sunshine and music to the pontoon with ABBA’s greatest hits putting teams in the racing mindset.

The forecast for Sunday predicted wind squalls and upon arrival at the clubhouse the red “advanced conditions” flag was flying. Nonetheless, boats were quickly launched and despite the conditions, teams quickly made their way through another forty races of the round robin. Capsizes and breakages plagued the day with our two bosuns constantly running through the boat park with everything from rudders to sails and masts. The tough conditions did nothing to diminish morale and it was lovely to see so many smiles on and off the water – even post-capsize!

We moved swiftly through to semis as the wind continued to build and breakages forced us to retire twelve boats. Unfortunately, we only got through four races before the wind took its toll and a leaking boat brought an abrupt end to the day. The winning teams were determined from the results of the round robin discarding the results of semis.

Trinity College Dublin won the event doing an impressive job of drinking their prizes before their flight. Sevenoaks Pirate Hawks and University College Dublin filled out the rest of the top three. The overwhelming response from participants was that it was an incredibly well organised event with all our volunteers doing Imperial proud. As the popularity of university sailing continues to grow, events like this keep Imperial Sailing on the map.