The Best Youth Events?

The P&B kids, those are the children of Dave Wade and Tom Stewart and their wives, have just enjoyed another superb Junior Bourne End Week leading many of us here to wonder which the best Junior sailing events are.

The P&B kids, those are the children of Dave Wade and Tom Stewart and their wives, have just enjoyed another superb Junior Bourne End Week leading many of us here to wonder which the best Junior sailing events are.

Junior Bourne End Week, is actually only three days long but is packed with a mixture of fun team games on and off the water and some racing. It is hard to tell whether the kids were prouder of their sailing successes or of their team game victories. It doesn’t matter too much as they all want to return next year for more fun. If your kids are not too sure about sailing we think JBEW might be the least intimidating fun regatta.

The Optimist Championships attracts some of the best youth sailors in the country and many of our Olympic stars have been schooled here. The coached fleets at the Optimist Championships offer an exceptionally high level of tuition and a high proportion of coaches to sailors. This is probably the best way to bring forward the burgeoning talent of your child.

Vita Heatchote

The kids at JBEW suffered some pretty unreasonable and unseasonable weather. Meaning that if they had them drysuits were the order of the day. But once the kids were well wrapped up they were happy to sail and play in the water all day.

This weekend it is the adults turn for fun and Wader and Tom Stewart are off to Brightlingsea to sail Fireballs and 12s. The boys will no doubt test out some development sails on the race track followed by some beer after.

The Merlin Rocket Class Silver Tiller circus moves to Beautiful Lyme Regis where Oli Wells will fly the P&B Flag and hope continue the success enjoyed by the P&B Musto Race Team at Aldeburgh last weekend where they took first place. Downwin speed was the key to this success which is largely down to the excellent Spinnaker. As soon as we sailed a hot angle we had a clear advantage and were able to come from behind however if you don’t nail the gybes you have to start the hard work again as you can see in this video.