The TOMs Cup

On Thursday 7th November, the CBYA held a sponsored event – the TOMs Cup. This event was designed to regenerate interest in TOMs sailing, and to showcase the great fun of  TOMs sailing, and more specifically, TOMs racing. To that end the Club was able to secure some sponsorship from the financial management company Blevins Franks, and together we contributed over 500€ towards the cost of the event.

On the day, 12 CBYA members raced 3 TOMs from the Calpe Marina to the fish factory just off Altea, past the Calpe fish factory and back to the finish at Moraira. Real Club Náutico Calpe managed the start, positioned the committee boat, and provided a safety boat to follow behind the TOMs as they raced. They also managed the finish line and recorded the times.

The 3 boats contested the start line, which was an upwind start to the windward mark (some 500 meters) and then a close reach, followed by a broad reach to the first mark; the fish factory off Altea, leaving it to starboard. All three boats used their spinnakers as the wind moved aft in the latter half of this leg until they rounded the furthest mark, and then set a best course to windward back to the finish at Calpe. The boats were pretty even on the first leg, but on the beat back to Calpe, the making tack was directly back to the Peñon. TOM 1 took the Rhum-line to the rock, but TOMs 2 and 3 headed inshore as they match raced each other. As it turned out, the beach bent the wind and provided the best course to the finish line, and these two boats ended the race with a photo finish, whereas TOM 1 increasingly lost ground in the significant sea state offshore, and finished some 15 minutes behind the other two.

After the racing, the CBYA provided refreshments at Dracula’s Restaurant, during the prize giving. The event was named the TOMs Cup, but instead of a cup, the Club presented every participant with an engraved commemorative medal. Many thanks to Connie Forster, our Boating Officer and TOMs Coordinator, for all the hard work she put in to organise this event, and also to our member Peter Hodgkinson of Blevins Franks, for arranging the sponsorship of the event.

Every person who took part hailed the event as a tremendous success, and pleaded with the organisers to hold the event again in the future. For the benefit of those who took part, as well as those that missed out, we will run similar events going forward.

If there is sufficient interest, we will restart the weekly Saturday race training events, and try to hold a “round the cans” race with 3 or 4 TOMs once a month. If you want to join in, look out for the weekly newsletter advertising the events, and if you want to learn to sail a TOM before committing to racing, then remember we hold weekly TOMs sailing practice every Thursday, where you can learn to handle one of these exciting little yachts. They are an excellent next step up to bigger boats for dinghy sailors, and of course, they don’t fall over!

The CBYA Library

Many new members may not know that the CBYA has its own library. Many book donations have been made in the past and the CBYA has quite a list of titles. These books can be borrowed for a period  (4 weeks) for a deposit of 10€. To see the list of books that you can take out from the library, visit the following page on the CBYA website: https://cbya.org/cbya-library/ or click +INFO/CBYA LIBRARY. To borrow books, send an email to Rosalind Miranda by clicking HERE

A little Education

Members often report errors when they try to purchase tickets on the CBYA website. Common errors include:

• • Critical Error: This is often caused because there is an incomplete purchase in your Shopping Basket. Click on your shopping basket and delete whatever has been left in there from a previous session. Your purchase should now proceed without error.
  • Sorry the product cannot be purchased: This error occurs when if you have an account (can log in), but your membership has expired, for example you have set your account to Not Auto-renew, but have forgotten to update your subscription. The solution is to renew your membership and try again.