Beastly Easterlies scupper RYA Volvo Youth Nationals

by Karenza Morton on 17 Apr 2009 The weather won out as beastly Easterlies scuppered the chance of any sailing on day four of the RYA Volvo Youth National Championships and Trials at Largs Sailing Club on Thursday.

After a morning of 30 knot plus gusts, all hands were rallied to the pump at midday as a drop in the breeze to below 20 knots saw the race officials and safety boats called to the water and the sailors prepare to launch.

But a swing back to gale force conditions almost as quickly as relative calm had arrived saw things put on hold once again and with the gusts back up to 40 knots by mid-afternoon racing was eventually canned for the day at 3.15pm.

David Campbell-James, event director and Principal Race Officer, said: 'It has been a frustrating couple of days for everyone but it was not a difficult decision to make today.

'The Easterly winds have made things very difficult, we tried to get everyone out because very quickly we got some sailable conditions but almost just as quickly things changed again and the gust ratio was very high meaning we had no option but to make the call to abandon for the day.'

With the Championships also acting as the Trials for the 2009 Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships as well as the various RYA Volvo Youth Squads, a change to the Sailing Instructions means there is now a provision to run three races tomorrow – the final day of racing – with the start of racing brought forward by half-an-hour to 10.25am.

Duncan Truswell, RYA Youth Racing Manager, added: 'The Easterlies have meant that there have been a limited number of highly variable races and ideally we would like to see more races take place before we make the selections, in order to help establish the most consistent performers. We hope that we will be able to get more races in tomorrow, in particular to enable the race teams to bring all the outstanding discards into play.'