Derbyshire Youth Sailors Brave Winter Training Events

Preparations for the 2005 series of Derbyshire Youth Sailing racing events have continued through the winter months and that includes the young sailors bravely taking to their dinghies at sailing clubs around Derbyshire to put in hours of crucial training in techniques and racing skills.

Training through the winter needs determination and enthusiasm to ignore the testing conditions and the help of a little specialist clothing to make it safe. The young sailors, aged between eight and eighteen, wear toughened dry suits over warm clothing along with a warm hat and gloves and, with the usual buoyancy aid or life jacket on top, they are quite comfortable and appropriately dressed.

The training can be as much as six hours sailing in a day and with a couple of hours on shore tuition as well, it can be quite demanding. When both days of a weekend are committed to training between full weeks at school, then it is evident that the youth sailors in Derbyshire love their sport.

Mike Haynes, Training Co-ordinator for DYS commented “We have provided training opportunities for the young sailors to help them improve on their sailing performance and maintain their fitness levels for competing in the DYS series and other events. Sailing is an exhilarating sport and needs whole body strength as well as skill and tactical awareness to be able to compete at the higher levels. Most of all though, the sailors thoroughly enjoy themselves, usually no matter what the weather or the Instructors throw at them.”

Other preparations for the 2005 series are also well underway. The calendar of dates for the 10 events at 10 different venues across Derbyshire is almost complete and the first three of these are at Carsington Sailing Club on March 19^th followed by Toddbrook Sailing Club on April 16^th and Trent Valley Sailing Club on April 23^rd . The middle, North and South of Derbyshire all visited in the first three events.

There is still plenty of time for other youth sailors to register with Derbyshire Youth Sailing, which is free, and sailors only need to be capable of completing a simple triangular course to begin competing in the series. There are junior as well as senior trophies to be won in the series as well as best improver awards and there are prizes at each event.

Mike Shaw, webmaster for DYS, said “We now have on-line registration for the youth sailors at www.dysailing.com to both join DYS and for each of the series events and training too. This makes it simple for them to join in and the website provides loads of information as well as having a gallery of images from the training and sailing events.”

Derbyshire’s youth sailors won the coveted MountHaes trophy last year and secured good results in a wide range of other events. Their efforts to continue improving mean accepting the need to train through the winter, which they say they thoroughly enjoy.