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Topper Nationals - Largs 3rd-8th August 2025

Published 20:00 on 10 Aug 2025

One of our keenest young Topper sailors Arthur PJ (still aged 11 until Thursday this week!) travelled up to Largs on the West coast of Scotland for the UK Topper National Championships. Largs is a beautiful spot on the Firth of Clyde about 30 miles southwest of Glasgow. Largs Sailing Club is based at Largs Marina, a full service and breakwater protected marina that serves yachts cruising around the southernmost western isles of Scotland including Arran, Bute, the Cumbrae Islands and the Kintyre Peninsula. It really is a beautiful place to explore from land or sea.

130 sailors from across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales competed in three separate groups; the 5.3 fleet, the 4.2 fleet and the Regatta fleet. This made for some exciting tactics on the launch ramp as some of the more experienced racers jostled for position to be first away.

Arthur was competing in the 4.2 fleet of 25 boats. Sailors in this fleet were a bit younger and lighter (mostly aged 11 to 13 years) and used a smaller 4.2 square metre sail versus the 5.3 square metre sail on a standard Topper rig. And just so you know; the 99 boats in the 5.3 fleet were mostly sailed by teenagers aged 13-16 years with an even mix of boys and girls; while the 10 boats in the Regatta fleet were sailed by kids who had not done much racing previously and this was their first taster of a longer format regatta.

Sunday was the first day of racing with 4 races back to back in 15-25 knots of wind and 0.5m waves for some great downwind Topper surfing. Quite different to our regular Junior Sailing conditions on Saturday afternoons at Tammy! On the Monday, all racing was cancelled due to Storm Floris which we waited to arrive with intrepidation of 55 knot gusts, blown down trees and power outages. Fortunately it wasn't that bad. But on the Tuesday, just as the beachmaster was about to blow his whistle for all the boats to launch the wind picked up to a steady 30 knots and racing was postponed again until conditions improved; which actually turned out to be the next day. Very fortunately the weather improved no end and on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we had three glorious days of racing in sunshine and wind varying from 10 - 25 knots. In total 13 races were held, and in the 4.2 fleet, sailors were able to discard their two worst results.

Overall, it was another great sailing experience. We made a bunch of new friends from across the UK and Ireland and had a wonderful holiday.

Next year, with the Topper Nationals expected to be somewhere on the South coast of England, we hope to bring along a few more Tammy Junior sailors with us. If you or your kids are interested in that kind of thing, then please come along to Junior Sailing at Tamesis when it starts up again on Saturday 6th September. We're also expecting quite a few Tammy kids wanting to join the local London & Southeast regional Topper racing circuit at nearby lake, reservoir and seaside sailing clubs that happen throughout the Autumn and into the Spring next year. So if you do have any questions and want to find out more then please give me a shout.

Overall results for all fleets https://gbrtopper.ourclubadmin.com/event-results.php?event=1534

More photos from Largs https://photos.app.goo.gl/AUoVk1B335cubNix6

L&SE region Topper Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/TopperSE

Race report Matt PJ