Sevenoaks School's sailing A team has won the 2011 BSDRA Thames Valley championships, which took place on Saturday 11 June.

The championships were held at Bray Lake, near Maidenhead, and hosted by Eton College. Twenty-two teams from 14 schools took part, with Sevenoaks School entering two teams.

Despite a late start, good wind meant plenty of racing for all teams. Initially the teams were split into seeded leagues, with the results used to place them in Gold, Silver, Bronze and Novice leagues for the second stage of the competition.

Sevenoaks School’s A team won all their races in the morning to progress comfortably into the Gold league. A young Sevenoaks B team (Year 9 and Year 10 sailors) performed really well to qualify for the silver league.

The gold league: with the top five teams battling it out was closely fought with Sevenoaks A finishing 2nd after dropping a race to Magdalen College School A team (they would get a chance for revenge later).

Sevenoaks B, the youngest team in the competition, continued to sail well, with some notable wins over some good A teams. They finished third in the Silver league and consequently 8th overall.

The top four teams progressed to the semi-finals, where Sevenoaks A saw off locals Eton A to set up a final against MCS A – a team who have been performing really well in school events this year.

With time running short only two races could be held in the final instead of the usual best of three so the accumulative scores would decide the winner. MCS took the first race 9 points to 11, a scoreline which Sevenoaks managed to reverse in the second race. With the points tied the result went in favour of Sevenoaks as the winners of the second race – so victory by the tightest of margins, but victory none the less!

Results:
1st Sevenoaks A: Laurence Gibbons (capt) & Ed Broadhead
Harrison Hodgkins & Jack Colquitt
Imogen Smith & Flora Donald

2nd MCS A
3rd Eton A
8th Sevenoaks B: Ben Moverley Smith (capt) & Issy Gordon
Will Bilton & Robbie Edwards
Isla Stevens & Katherine Dodds