Blackwater sailors at the Regional Junior Championships at Grafham Water
by Christine Brown 1 Oct 2018 18:36 BST
29-30 September 2018
Optimists during the Regional Junior Championships at Grafham Water © Rob Haigh
This weekend a hardy bunch of Blackwater Sailing Club Cadets took part in the Regional Junior Championships at Grafham Water. This was a six race open event over two days, with classes for Optimists, Toppers, Teras, Fevas, Cadets and Laser 4.7s and regatta fleets for the Optimist, Tera and Toppers.
Conditions were good over the weekend with a shifty F2-3 breeze on the first day which made some of the races a bit of a lottery, on the Sunday the conditions were better with a steady F3-4 for the racing.
Blackwater SC had a total of 12 sailors at the event, the biggest fleet was in the Optimist Championship Class where Nick Evans had a superb event winning the class with two Bullets, two seconds, a third and a fourth place. Further down the fleet Hugh Andrews had a successful campaign finishing 10th overall and registering a bullet. Jess Haigh, Lucy Shelter, Dominic Carver and Osea Evans all had very good results and hopefully have all done enough to qualify for the RYA East Zone Squad.
In the Topper Championship fleet club stalwarts Lloyd and Jessica Taylor showed a strong performance, Lloyd finishing eighth overall with one second place.
Ben Haigh competing in his first Laser open event performed very well in what effectively was a national event finishing 63rd out of 67 racers.
In the Optimist Regatta fleet Charlie Bourne had an exceptional weekend winning the event with two Bullets along the way. Hector Trickey in the RS Tera Regatta fleet had a good weekend finishing second overall.
The RYA Onboard Fun Fleet was a welcome addition this year and gave cadets who are not quite ready for racing the chance to improve their sailing skills, Katherine Carver agreed it was fun in this fleet and would recommend it for next year.
Overall, this is a really good event for the youngsters and is the perfect opportunity for them to start their sailing adventures outside the club.
For more details about events like this see www.blackwatersailingclub.org.uk