Ripon Sailing Club’s Mill-Volvo sponsored Youth & Junior open meeting enjoyed close racing between 21 boats on Saturday 19 May. The light wind was perfect for tactical racing at the front of the fleet and also allowed many less experienced helms to compete.
Ripon SC is enjoying generous sponsorship from Mill-Volvo NE, the local Volvo dealership based in Knaresborough and other locations across the NE, they are providing prizes and other support to all the Youth & Junior events at RSC.
The open meeting was event 5 in the NE Youth Travellers Series that visits 11 clubs and provides a competitive but friendly racing environment, with more experienced sailors strong competition at the front of the fleet, while at the same time including on-the-water coaching at the back of the fleet to help improve sailor’s racing performance in their first few seasons.
The series is now in its 38th year and continues to evolve to meet the needs of developing youth & junior racers in the region, former winners include 2008 Olympic Laser Gold Medallist Paul Goodison, and a host of competitive club sailors from the region.
The overall winners at Ripon were RSC sailors Ellie Clark and Yusaf Hussein in a Mirror, with 3 wins from 4 races. Second place overall went to Covenham SC’s Henry Redmond in a Laser 4.7, while fellow Covenham sailor Harry Nickells couldn’t use his birthday luck to make the Laser Radial PY work to his favour, finishing 3rd overall. Tom Moss (Topper) and Tom Bates (Tera Sport) gave the Lasers and Mirror a run for their money and the top 10 places were close on overall points.
It was great to see the first U10, George Spence, come home 8th having had a good tussle all day with U14 Daniel Smith (6th). Rookie crew Hannah Courts finish 7th with her experienced helm Emma Hampshire in their Mirror; Ripon is enjoying a resurgence of interest in Mirrors at the moment and it was great to see two in the top 10 at this event.
4 other helms were competing in their first ever race, with Finlay Ranns taking the best newcomer trophy; many sailors are enjoying their first season of racing in the Traveller series and club racing. There was tight racing across the fleet and mid-fleet racing produced some good battles between Tera sailors Kian Willatt, Ollie Tindley, Ollie Lumb and Finlay McCreanor with DRSC’s James Catterall and RSC’s Sophia Engley evenly matched in their Optimists.
Overall series results for the Southern Zone now see Harry Redmond in first place chased by Harry Nickkels and Tom Moss and Liam Boyce (DRSC) leading the North Zone with Henry Ashton in 2nd.
The next events are at Pennine SC and South Shields SC on 9 June with the final on 14 July at Filey. The Mill-Volvo event prizes were presented by Barbara Darling, Honorary Member at Ripon SC and long term Youth & Junior sailing supporter, she also set up the Northern section of the Youth Traveller Series over 20 years ago.
