Junior Team Racing Development Day

Take 25 young sailors from 5 local clubs, 8 Picos, involve their parents, a sunny day on the Tarn and introduce them all to Team Racing


Results :- Lots of sailing activity, loads of smiling faces and great interaction between everybody

This is the third year that the Club, with the help of Otley, have run a Junior Team Racing Development Day. This year the sailors from Yeadon and Otley were joined by sailors from Ripon, Beaver and Yorkshire Dales Sailing Clubs

The aim of the day is to introduce young people with a mixture of racing experiences to a different form of dinghy racing and as they come from a different clubs to each other as well and to a different place to sail, as well as having some fun!

Preparing the Picos in the morning

Heather had the unenviable job of putting the sailors into ‘equal’ish teams, each team having a more experienced junior sailor as Team Captain with then a balance of experienced and less confident or experienced sailors. This immediately mixes everybody from the difference clubs and sailing circuits and very soon everybody was chattering away and early nerves quickly vanished.


After bacon sandwiches and lots of boat sorting the day started with a short briefing to make sure that everyone understood the format of the day (including the Organising Team!), the short races, the differences between team racing and the more normal fleet racing and a recap of the basic sailing rules that were likely to be evoked. Some of the accompanying parents from other Clubs were co-opted to assist with the various organisation tasks to get them involved in the whole day too


The racing was held in Picos which are a great leveller for all the sailors, but rewards good utilisation of basic techniques. In the morning every team raced each other in a mini league and within the first couple of races people seemed to get the idea and were starting to race as a team together. Once everybody had raced each other we then had a quick lunch stop for pizza and chips, wonderfully prepared by Head Chef Gerard, with Sharon and Louise keeping him in check. We used the league positions to determine the knock out stages to determine the overall winning team. At this point it started to get a little more serious, after all chocolate was at stake !!!!



Close racing occurred throughout the day


The racing for the final stages was very close which kept the spectators, and by this time the club sailors turning up for the afternoon’s club racing, enthralled. All the races had tight finishes, none more so than the Final between Callum’s team and Matt’s team in which the last three boats finished within a boat length giving overall victory, and the chocolate, to Callum’s team.

Once ashore everybody mucked in and got all the boats packed up and the Otley boats on to their trailers before the Prizegiving. As well as for the winning team sweets and chocolate was distributed throughout the competitors. Callum completed his final role as the winning Team Captain and thanked everyone on behalf of the competitors for organising and running the event, before everyone departed off for home tired but smiling, after meeting lots of new people and having a very good day.

Junior Team Racing this Saturday

Hi, just to let you know that this Saturday we will be holding our annual Junior Team Racing event. Junior sailors from a number of local clubs including Yeadon, Otley, Ripon and Yorkshire Dales will be taking part.

Come down early and see all the action.

Racing from 10.30 'till 14.30 - hopefully with minimal distruption to the normal afternoon's Club races.

Action from last year's event

National 12 Open at Yeadon Sailing Club

Apologies for late publication !

An enthusiastic fleet arrived at Yeadon for the 2011 open meeting to be greeted by a warm welcome but a very light and variable to non-existent breeze.

Despite the conditions race officer Bill Wilson and his intrepid team managed to get the racing off almost on time and it was local boat N2769 Barrow Boy sailed by Howard Chadwick and Helen Nicholson who prevailed in the difficult and light conditions with N3499 Out of the Blue sailed by Philip David and Katie McInnes in hot pursuit finishing second whilst N3356 Squidgy Bits sailed by Austin and James Flather finished third with Brian Herring and Ros Stevenson N1673 finishing fourth and first vintage in the race.

After an excellent lunch provided by Sarah, Margaret and Cathy the course was changed and the breeze had picked up but only slightly and race two was started.  Philip and Katie were taking no chances this time and were manoeuvring against Howard and Helen even before the start, a move which worked well and allowed Philip to take up the lead and hold it to the end. Howard and Helen recovered to second place and N3468 Pillow Fight finishing third closely followed by Austin and James Flather in fourth.  

 Brian and Ros were again first vintage in N1673 whilst N2335 Saskia sailed by Tim Gatti and Ben Palmer was 2^nd vintage in sixth position.  John and Sue Nixon in N3514 had travelled up from Carsington but unfortunately had only brought their winged rudder and found that the shallow water and (uncharacteristic) weed at Yeadon were making their Feeling Foolish very difficult to sail so they called it a day after race 2 vowing to come back without wings in 2012.

In race three Austin and James made a great start and led the fleet, however Philip and Katie again got through whilst the positions behind them were changing frequently.  As the breeze finally picked up Tim Gatti was in second place and a close dual was fought between Howard and Tim over several laps whilst Austin and John were never far away.  Eventually Howard got past Tim and at the finish it was Philip first, Howard second and then Tim.  Tim’s hard fought 3^rd place in this race allowed him to take the overall first Vintage on a tie breaker. 

1st	N3499	Philip David	Katie McInnes	2 points	Double Bottomed
2nd	N2769	Howard Chadwick	Helen Nicholson	3 points	AC- single bottomed
3rd	N3356	Austin Flather	James Flather	7 points	AC- single bottomed
4th	N3468	John Cheetham	Alison Cheetham	8 points	Double Bottomed
5th	N2335	Tim Gatti	Ben Palmer	9 points	1st Vintage (clinker built)
6th	N1673	Brian Herring	Ros Stevenson	9 points	Vintage
7th	N3216	Neil McInnes	Rachel Dean	14 points	AC- single bottomed
8th	N3514	John Nixon	Sue Nixon	15 points	Double Bottomed (winged rudder)