Fine weather frustrates the start of youth racing sailing series
Easter Saturday’s fine, warm weather didn’t provide the necessary wind to allow the best start to the Derbyshire Youth Sailing 2007 series for the first event of the season held at Trent Valley Sailing Club. The twenty entrants enjoyed just one race on the crowded river at Trent Lock and then spent the rest of the day making the best of the sunshine, hoping that the gentle breeze would return to allow them to complete the second race needed to establish the event result.
The first race had seen some impressive light wind sailing with Carsington’s Phill Bell in his Laser dinghy taking first place and Trent Valley & Carsington sailor, Joshua Haynes (8) being the first Junior in his Optimist dinghy and placed seventh overall ahead of older and more experienced sailors. Regrettably for the leaders, these results cannot count towards the series points score and a new date of Saturday October 27th has been set to re-run the event.
This was also the inaugural outing for the first of the new DYS lease scheme dinghy’s, jointly funded by a donation from Rotary International of Wirksworth and DYS. Ruth Terry (11) was presented with the racing prepared Optimist boat earlier in the day and went on to achieve a very creditable 10th place overall, being the second Optimist dinghy to finish.
Ruth has been a member of Trent ValleySC for 3 years and the lease scheme is allowing her to have her own, race competitive dinghy so that she can take her racing sailing to the next stage. Ruth has already achieved RYA level 2 and is currently working towards her level 3 qualification on training courses run by the club.
Fifteen of the competitors had enjoyed more of the spring sunshine at Carsington Water for a day of pre-season training during last week under the guidance of two DYS sailing instructors, Laser sailor Tom Levick (Laser National Youth Squad) and Jon Saunders both of Carsington SC. In light winds the fleet concentrated on start line tactics and strategy, mark rounding and light wind boat handling – just the ticket for Saturday’s event.
Meanwhile back at Trent Valley Sailing Club, the club house has been seeing a lot of over winter activity in preparation for vintage celebrations on the weekend of June 30th and July 1st this year, as the 100th anniversary of the construction of the clubhouse is set to see some of the oldest dinghies around being competitively raced once more on the River Trent. The club is hoping for fine weather but this time with some breezes so that the weekend’s vintage racing format can be enjoyed by all.
The next Derbyshire Youth Sailing series event is in the North of the County at Toddbrook Sailing Club near WhaleyBridge on Saturday 21st April. Briefing is at 10:30 with the first race at 11:00. Details and pre-event registration is available, along with lots more information and some excellent photographs of Saturday’s event in the gallery, all on the www.dysailing.com website.