RYA Eric Twiname Championships - Entries are now open

by Matt Carter on 29 Mar 2014 Entries for the 2014 RYA Eric Twiname Championships, being staged at Rutland Sailing Club, are now open. The annual Junior event will take place from 10 – 11 May 2014, and all sailors should enter online via the event website.

One of the highlights of the RYA’s Racing calendar, the regatta is now in its 28th year and will see over 300 junior sailors pit their sailing skills against the best young talents from each of the six English Zones, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, in a bid to help their Zone or home country team scoop the coveted Eric Twiname Shield.

The event which is an integral part of the Junior class calendar will offer the RYA Zone/Home Country Squads competitive racing in a fun and friendly environment. The weekend will welcome boats from across seven of the RYA Junior classes - Optimist, Topper, and Feva dinghy classes with the windsurfers racing on Bic Techno boards with 4.5m, 5.8m, 6.8m and 7.8m rigs.

Last year’s event saw the RYA South West Zone reign victorious at Rutland Water as the ‘Battle of the Zones’ came to a exhilarating finish. The RYA South Zone clinched the Eric Twiname Dinghy Trophy while the South East Zone sealed the Eric Twiname Windsurfing Trophy.

Sailors will be eager to impress and perform as many will use this regatta as a stepping stone to go on and contest RYA National Junior Squad selections and as preparation for their Summer regattas.

Chris Atherton, RYA Eric Twiname Championships Event Director, said: 'The RYA Eric Twiname Championship is once again shaping up to be a fantastic event which will provide the young sailors with the perfect platform to test their racing skills in a fun and competitive environment.

'The level of racing displayed at last year’s regatta was excellent and with a hard winters training as part of the RYA Zone and Home Country Squad programmes, I am sure they are all raring to get out on the water and put into practice what they have learnt. For some of the sailors this will be their first time competing in a multi class, multi course, national event, so this experience will prove to be an ideal opportunity for them to develop and progress in their future sailing careers.

Atherton concluded: 'We had a very strong turnout at last year’s event at Rutland Sailing Club and are expecting the same again this time around. With this in mind, I would urge interested sailors and parents to finalise their plans as soon as possible and enter online via the event website before the entry deadline of Friday 25 April.'

Thanks to the long-standing and on-going support of the Eric Twiname Memorial Trust, the event, for sailors aged between eight and 15, is very cheap to enter with almost all of the costs associated with the running of the regatta met by the RYA and the Trust.

For more information about the event and to enter online visit the event website.