Welsh Youth Championships 2010
Sept 25th & 26th 2010: 130 sailors from all over Wales came to Pwllheli for the Welsh Youth Championships.
An amazing 25!! PDSC youth sailors aged 7 to 16 attended the Championships, sailing in 5 fleets: Optimist Main, Lasers & General Handicap, Topper Main, Optimist Training and Topper Training. Our very own Ken Newing participating also as assistant race officer.
As ever the laser fleet was challenging with many sailors at GBR and Worlds level competing, our 3 laser sailors turned in very respectable performances with Robyn Cox coming 9th, Jamie Whitely coming 13th and Jack Wild who only learnt to sail this May posting a highly respectable 26 out of a fleet of 29.
We had 3 sailors in the Topper Onboard/Training fleet, with great success for Hannah Roberts who won the fleet overall with Twm Brunton coming 3rd. This fleet also saw Adrian Whitely ably assisted by Graham coming a highly respectable 9th in what was his 1st championship event.
In the Optimist Onboard/Training fleet PDSC had nine sailors out of the fleet of 23. Annabelle Blight flew the PDSC flag high coming 2nd overall, swiftly followed by Harry Pulford in 3rd and Morgan Owen in 4th. Iwan Roberts, Elodie Edwards and Guto Williams all achieved top 10 positions and Pheobe Roberts, Tom Dawson and Jasmine Blight all came comfortably in the top 20 with Jasmine capping off her event in style with a 3rd place in the last race.
In the hotly contested Optimist Main fleet PDSC have a lot to be proud of. 8 sailors, Hatty Morsley, Emlyn Williams, Josh Dawson, Cori McFarlane, Daniel Whitely, Daniel Blight and Rowan and Huw Edwards from PDSC competed with Rowan taking 1st place, closely followed by Daniel Whitely in 2nd and Huw Edwards in 4th. Hatty Morsley sailed a great event to come 2nd placed girl.
There was more PDSC action in the handicap fleet where Catrin Drake paired up with Sara Jackson from South Wales to crew a 29er. We also had one representative in the Topper Main fleet with Ailsa MacFarlane doing well in the 36 strong fleet. Toby Morsley in his 420 was missed at the event but was rumoured to be cooking up success elsewhere!
This event topped off a fantastic season for Port Dinorwic which has seen 11 new youth sailors come through our beginners program and start to race at PDSC, and PDSC sailors representing our club at events and often taking podium positions in France, Belgium, Holland, Ireland and Spain….a more in-depth report on the annual round up will come later.
Merrion Edwards
See photos of the prizegiving