What a tear-up: Little Britain

To this year’s Little Britain Challenge Cup, where the CLM consortium, was out in... well, not exactly “force” actually. The Mace CLM boat was only able to scrape together a crew of three for Thursday’s race. We understand certain Mace staff booked on the boat were asked to step down to make way for a CLM team consisting of staff from Laing O’Rourke and CH2M Hill International as well as Mace, which failed to fully materialise. Getting through the race at all with such a skeleton crew is commendable of course, but the boat came in 22nd out of 23 competitors – hardly an Olympic performance.

High tensions on high seas

Skipper/crew relationships were certainly strained during the racing. We witnessed some colourful language and high-pitched screams emanating from certain skippers as they tried to take the lead. Was ISG InteriorExterior's skipper right to shout 'You f*$kwits, get out of the way!' to Mace’s boat following a risky turning manoeuvre?

In fact, the word ‘teamwork’ took on a new meaning as Mace battled it out with its offshoot consultancy Sense – nearly splitting the boat in two as it attempted to get around a buoy.

Over reacting and overboard

Mystery surrounds the identity of one boat belonging to a high-profile consultant. One crew member was reportedly nearly knocked out cold by the skipper’s flying fist – although this was apparently later blamed on confusion over winch turning. Meanwhile, another skipper was fished out of the Solent by a passing power yacht as the coastguard helicopter hovered above. Was he pushed?

Saturday was a lot calmer, weather wise, yet environmental designers atelier ten managed an 'upright broach'. We hear one crew member, while clinging on for dear life, captured the near-capsize on her mobile phone and was proudly showing of the disaster at the bar during the gala.