The Princess Royal honours Dell Quay sailor

Dell Quay Sailing Club’s Sarah Eggleton was honoured with an RYA Outstanding Contribution Award by sailing’s national governing body, which recognises individuals who have made a significant volunteer contribution to their club or organisation, either over a period of time or a one-off effort.

A total of 53 awards were bestowed upon volunteers from across the UK, recognising their exceptional generosity and dedication to boating. The awards ceremony and luncheon was held at One Great George Street, where each award winner was presented with a commemorative medallion and certificate.

In more than 20 years as a Dell Quay SC member, Sarah has made a significant contribution to club life, not least to getting more local youngsters sailing. Since taking over as Junior Co-ordinator in 2005, she has ensured Dell Quay provides a quality service during all training courses and encourages many of the juniors she has coached to go on to pursue their own dinghy instructor qualifications.

In addition to getting more than 70 juniors on to the water each year, Sarah ensures Junior Week runs smoothly, from organising safety boat cover to feeding hundreds of people and making sure the kids enjoy their sailing. She has helped expand the club’s junior training and event activities including the club achieving RYA Champion Club status, recognised for feeding talented youngsters on to the RYA’s World Class junior and youth pathways.

Sarah was nominated by her club and selected as a winner by the RYA Awards panel.

Duncan Truswell, RYA Sport Development Manager, said: “The RYA Volunteer Awards are our opportunity to say ‘thank you’, on behalf of clubs and associations that affiliate to the RYA, to their volunteers, the people that really make a difference to help people get afloat. It’s our opportunity to take a bit of time out to appreciate the commitment these individuals make to the sport in helping people get afloat safely and enjoyably.”

DELL QUAY

A fortunate window in a stormy weekend allowed Dell Quay SC to complete the first two races of its open Frostbite Series – an hour later and the fleet would have been blown off the water by gale-force gusts.

As it was, after a comparatively quiet first race, the squalls caused plenty of work for the safety boats in race two, with three competitors failing to finish. But the weather seemed not to matter for Bill Dawber (Solo). He came close to victory on the water as well on handicap each time, with only the fastest of the three RS400s heading him to the finish line.

Closer challenges came from the slowest boat in the fleet, the Pico of Andrew Morley, only 24 seconds behind on handicap in the first race, with a gap to the remaining competitors of three minutes or more. Morley was forced back to third in race two, as Ken Baker and Graham Evans (Dayboat) made a perfect start and stayed comfortably in contention through the two laps to finish third in a time which put them second on handicap.

Both Dawber and Carol Andrews made good use of the Solo’s manoeuvrability, each executing a neat first-race rounding of quay mark in front of shoreside spectators to overtake the RS400 immediately ahead.

Andrews’ decision to use a reduced rig on her Solo proved wise – she stayed in control to take third place in the first race and fourth in the second.

Despite a cautious approach of minimum gennaker use, two RS 400s (Rob Corfield and Jonathan Line, Peter King and Jamie Prescott) had bad capsizes and failed to finish race two, while Chris Rowsell and Jason Mortimer dropped to last place on corrected time though they crossed the line first. King and Prescott’s first place on the water in race one gave them a better result of fourth place.

While Dawber has made a fine start in the series, there are another ten races still to go this season.

The next two are on December 12, starting at 10.30am.

Visitors are welcome, entry is free – as are hot drinks for competitors. For more information see www.dellquaysc.co.uk

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