The weekend of the 17-18 October saw the RYA Youth and Junior Championships take place at Farmoor Reservoir near Oxford. This is a huge event attracting all the top youth sailors in the country competing in U19 and U16 divisions with teams from schools, national squads and sailing clubs from around the UK, with 48 teams in total. Sevenoaks entered one team in each division.
Saturday saw a mixed day for the two teams with the U16 team having a great day winning 12 out of 14 races and sitting second overall overnight. The U19s struggled a bit for consistency, beating some of the harder teams and dropping races against teams they would usually expect to beat.
Day two saw new challenges with much lighter winds. The U19s turned their form around and won their entire remaining league stage races to progress to the semi-finals as fourth seeds. The U16s continued to sail brilliantly and dropped just one race to be seeded second going into knockout stages. Unfortunately with the wind continuing to be up and down the organisers took the disappointing decision to stop the event early and take the results from the league stages, leaving the U16s in second place overall, and first school team, and the U19s fourth.
A slightly frustrating end but two good performances, especially from the U16s who ended up with a 20/3 win loss ratio and sailed really well as a team. The future looks bright for them!
Sailing for Sevenoaks:
U19Alice Kidd (capt) & James Rudd-JonesGeorge Haynes & Tancredi Pucci Oliver Kidd & Helen Jones
U16Matthew Caiger (capt) & Becky CaigerNicholas Davies & Annabel Richards Cossie Lewis & Alice Parker
