Photos by Hawkins family
Tricky, shifty conditions greeted the competitors this weekend at Carsington for the Youth and Junior National Championships. Carsington has always been a great venue for the Mirror class, a personal favourite of my own because of it’s welcoming attitude towards the sailors and the good wind. The wind was of medium strength which suited all sailors and allowed some fantastic, competitive sailing to kick off the racing season with a bang. The event was combined with squad training so the weekend began with about an hours worth of pre-event practicing where all boats got a feel for the water. This time gave an opportunity to figure out the wind bends and areas of land that would affect the race course in the afternoon.
The 2009 Youth & Junior Championship was combined with the Southern Areas and held at Itchenor on the 5th & 6th September, please follow the link to read the report.
A superb event with 56 Mirrors in the Gold fleet plus 5 in the Silver fleet. It was held as part of the annual Poole YC Youth Regatta with over 200 boats taking part on three different courses. The Mirrors shared the central trapezoid course with a 69 strong Optimist fleet, which started five minutes after the Mirrors. Three races were held on the Saturday in lively winds which reached up to force 6 for the final race.
Great sailing and camping on a small lake with a very friendly Club. Many thanks to organisor Rod Little, race officer John Bailey, Results coordinator Nick Narracott and commodore Martin Gledhill for putting on such a good event and for making us so welcome.
First race each day, one discard
(editor's note - The dates for this event are identical to the 2000 Europeans at Brightlingsea, so I presume the results have been extracted from the European results (?) or the UK Nationals results (?) by just looking at the boats which qualified as either Youth or Junior). I think Position is place in the Euro or Nationals results.