Report by Bish Clow

My name is Bish Clow and I am thirteen years old. I have been sailing at Netley Sailing Club for two years now. I mostly sail an RS Feva or a Topper during our Club's sail training sessions and crew for my Dad on a RS Vision. Up until 5 weeks ago I had never sailed a RS Tera but since our club had bought three new Teras as training boats for the Juniors, and we were hosting the National Championship, I thought I would like the experience of racing at this level so I decided to give it a go! 

Two weeks ago the National Tera Squad came down for a weekend's training and I was able to take part in Saturday's training session. Ollie, who is one of the RS coaches, got all the squad moving around and warming up on land first before getting us on the water and practising. This was really great fun and I learnt a lot about the boat. Johnathan, the chief coach, was very generous with his time and knowledge and helped me and Dad learn lots on how to set the boat up and the class in general. Dave Machin, our Junior club training officer, let us make a few new additions to one of the club boats to help make it more comfortable for me, and I was all set to go.

I was a bit nervous on Saturday morning before the race. My friend Thomas Blake from the club was also going in for the championship and his Dad Chris gave us a very helpful chat before the main briefing, about race rules and strarts which helped a lot to focus my thoughts. It wasn’t long before Mum was taking the trolley off me and I was pushing off for the start of the first race. I soon began to really enjoy myself. The weather conditions were bright and hot, with a light, constant sea breeze. I thought my strengths that day were on the run down wind, but my weakness was not doing too well going up the beat in light winds especially when the tide is against you! On Sunday's races the winds were even lighter at first and the first race was difficult for me but my friend Thomas did fantastically well in the light winds and managed a 2nd against 50 other boats. (Wooo go Tom!) I finished 29th overall and am just very happy that I took part. I really enjoyed sailing the Tera and it was an ideal boat for me to get involved in big fleet racing for the first time.