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Junior Regatta and Barbecue on 12th July 2025

Published 19:22 on 13 Jul 2025

On Saturday 12th July Tammy hosted our end of summer term Junior Regatta and Barbecue for our junior sailors and their families. Plenty of fun races and sailing games were held on a very sunny afternoon with a warm, gusty easterly wind.

We used Professor Griff Tanner's famous random child sorting algorithm to select teams of two. Then on to the racing.

The first race was Wheelbarrows and Waterjuggling. This started with wheelbarrow racing across the club lawn, a Le Mans start; and then sailing round the race course while balancing a measuring jug full of water; one person steering, one person juggling; and then a walk back to the finish line. The second race was the Two Lap Relay. Racing in pairs again, with a walking start, one team member steered while the other sat on the foredeck calling tactics, fending off the go-boats or paddling on the first lap and then the crew members swapped round for the second lap and then walked back across the lawn to the finish line. The third race was the Freestyle Pairs. With our wonderful judges Jane, Griff and Kristen awarding points for artistic merit, technical performance and overall brilliance; the sailors sailed passed one boat at a time demonstrating outstanding singing, diving, gymnastics and capsizing skills.

And after the boats were recovered and put away it was time for a final swim and splash around.

Huge thanks goes to Nick for doing such a fantastic job on the BBQ; no easy thing when you have 30 hungry kids and parents lining up for more.And to all our other volunteers - Alexey, Griff, Joe, Ed and Lyra who showed up to support. With special thanks again to Lyra who calculated the race results and produced certificates for all the sailors. Thanks also to all the parents that contributed a salad, cakes and ice cream or helped to launch and recover the boats or judge a race.

This was the last Junior Sailing session before the Summer break. Over the break, Juniors are welcome to join in with the Sunday morning or Thursday evening club racing - either helming a club boat (Topper, Feva, ILCA) or crewing for an experienced member in their own boat (Merlin, Enterprise or National 18).Speak to Matt PJ if you want more info.

Junior Sailing resumes again on Saturday afternoon 6th September where a number of kids will participate in the Kingston River Festival with some Topper racing above Kingston Bridge at Minima Yacht Club to celebrate 1,100 years since the first King of England was crowned at Kingston.More info to follow on the Junior Sailing WhatsApp group.

The kids have also been asked to think up official names for our 2x race spec Toppers that we acquired at the end of last season with support of our sponsors SporTedd, a local Teddington based Sports charity.We plan to make much more use of these in September, October, November and attend a number of local and regional open meetings and regattas. So do shout if your kids want to join any of these events.

The overall winners of the Junior Cup on the day were:
1st. Josie + Huw
2nd. Jack + Andrew
3rd. Emily + Ksenia

And the results for our Saturday Afternoon Summer Series over 12 races between April and July (with 7 best results to count) were:

Toppers
1st. ArthurPJ
2nd. HenryM
3rd. Dennis

Lasers/ILCAs
1st. Louie
2nd. Huw

Feva
1st. Dennis + Jack
2nd. Ilker + Melisa

More photos here
https://photos.app.goo.gl/EFkVeLe5kQwS1vML7

Race report
Matt PJ