Success for Blackwater Workplace Challenge Team at Brightlingsea

Team Blackwater © Nigel Butler

During this summer we taught six adult novices to sail Topper dinghies on the Blackwater Sailing Club lake up to the level of being able to race a triangular course in a regatta.

This was the Workplace Challenge run by us as a joint venture between the RYA and Active Essex to offer businesses a learn to sail programme. This culminated in five of the team going to Brightlingsea Sailing Club to take part in a round robin series of races in Topaz single handers in very challenging conditions ranging from no wind to a force 4 sea breeze. They encountered things not usually found on the BSC lake such as tide, large navigation marks, navigation posts and commercial traffic to name but a few and they coped with these very well

Team Blackwater proved unbeatable and took the first two steps on the podium. Congratulations to the overall winner Aleutia House and to second placed Tash Kershaw. Many thanks to fellow instructors Rob Haigh, Frankie Ash and Drac Norman for helping to run this very enjoyable and successful programme.

For more details about events like this see www.blackwatersailingclub.org.uk