MYA 10 Rater National Championships 2025 at Datchet Water Radio Sailing Club

10 Rater National Championships at Datchet © Richard Jones

Datchet Radio Sailing were the hosts for this year's Nationals. Datchet delivered some champagne conditions for racing what must be described as the most powerful and glamorous radio sailing yachts, the 10 Rater.

After the briefing on Saturday by PRO Nigel Barrow, 13 boats came to the line for a weekend of A and B rig conditions. On Saturday we used the East side of the course and on the Sunday the North side. It is handy that Datchet can handle the majority of wind directions.

Phil Holiday and Hugh McAdoo set up an excellent course and with our boatman Richard, only had to make minor tweaks to keep the windward leeward configuration square to the wind. Our finishing team on Saturday was Elaine and Andrew Granger on Saturday and Elaine and Dave Adam on Sunday.

In the opening race Austin Guerrier took the win and showed great speed in his Trance design, but was closely followed by Graham Bantock in his own Diamond design and Oli Murray in another Diamond took third. Oli had not sailed these boats before today. As the morning went on Graham began to establish a lead on the fleet with three firsts, two seconds, and a third. Austin had a couple of hiccups in race 4 and 5 and Phil Holiday with his Blade 6 put together enough good results to climb up third.

At lunch there was a bit of controversial restart for the first race of the afternoon but racing soon settled and got under way.

10 Rater National Championships at Datchet - photo © Richard Jones

During the afternoon the wind shifts were significant. Skippers were punished severely if they got on the wrong side of them. Graham continued to dominate with Austin chasing hard for second. Phil (ahead on count back) tied with Roger Crates in his P8 from Bridlington. Richard Jones processed the results race by race to keep everyone up to date with their progress.

Racing was stopped early after 13 races with agreement from all, as sailing in the rain and cold for the last hour or two of the afternoon was little fun. We all retreated to the clubhouse for a BBQ deliciously prepared by Elaine and Graham Hetem. Thankfully the rain stopped and the barbecue was a complete success. The leftovers made for a wonderful lunch the following day for those that picked them up.

Sunday dawned dry but the wind had shifted so marks had to be launched on the North shore. Phil and Hugh were up at 6am and brought the boats up from the garage and with new marks out, laid out the course. The wind started in the northwest and gradually backed to the west. Phil had to jump in the motorboat as safety for the day and so we had a new entry to the event in the form of Craig Richards who took over Phil's boat but with a string of DNS on the first day and despite four seconds and three wins would not feature on the podium.

10 Rater National Championships at Datchet - photo © Nigel Barrow

The wind on Sunday was shifty and variable in strength making a difficult decision to go with A or B rig and occasionally C for some. Race 14 was a disaster for two of our podium runners and we wondered how things might develop. Ominously Craig Richards took the win from Austin, but normal service resumed and the battle between Graham and Austin continued with Oli Murray and Roger Crates in his P8 chasing hard for third place. In the end after 14 races on Sunday, Graham took a dominant win from Austin with Oli Murray third on countback from Roger.

Sailing a single fleet is hard work for the competitors with so many races, 27 in all. Not only is the racing hard, there is the lifting of the boats between races and always the odd repair or maintenance job to compete on these powerful boats. All enjoyed the weekend immensely and all that was left was the prize-giving for the top three competitors and a huge vote of thanks to the organisers. Thank you Datchet Radio Sailing team for your support of this event.

Overall Results:

10 Rater National Championships at Datchet - photo © Richard Jones