The 2015 Lipton Challenge Cup Yacht Race

Undoubtedly one of my highlights of the year was being given the opportunity to take some close-up photographs at the start of the 2015 Lipton Challenge Cup.

The Challenge is an annual event, and was hosted this year by the Royal Cape Yacht Club. This is because they were the winners of the event last year. For anyone who may be interested, detailed information about the event can be found here.

The challenge takes place over a number of days. This year it started on Sunday 12 July, and finished on Friday 17 July. I'm excited to report that RCYC again won the Challenge, which means (I think) that next year's event will also be hosted in Cape Town.

I sent the Yacht Club an email asking if they could recommend a good vantage point for me to take photographs of the race, and I was blown away when their Marketing Manager offered me a place on the photographers' boat! I could hardly believe my luck - the only stipulation was that I had to be at the club nice and early - which was the easy part!

On the day of the start, the weather was perfect - windy and with rough seas sporting three-metre swells (though on the boat they felt more like ten-metre swells!). It was rough out there, especially for someone like myself who hasn't ventured out to sea for many a year. But it was really worth the effort. A magical day full of fun and learning, spent with lovely people, and in a great environment.

I took tons of photos, many ruined by the sudden movements of the boat, and many ruined simply by lack of technique at that stage. But there are still too many good images not to share, and I thought I would try my hand at putting together a video made up of the images, rather than post each of them individually. So while the quality of the photos has suffered a little bit, I thought they came out ok in the end. Hope you enjoy.

Note: After finishing this post, I see that the video size on the blog page is quite small. You can view a slightly larger version on Youtube, by clicking here.