Sailjuice Winter Series success for Val Millward of Rutland Sailing Club
A disabled sailor from Grantham has had her best-ever set of results since the beginning of the Sailjuice Winter Series.
The series offers inclusive sailing with more than 500 dinghies taking part with able bodied and disabled sailors sailing their own chosen boats.
The Masters prize is open to any helm over 61-years of age and, in order to win the title, Val Millward had to perform well enough at the final event of the series, the Oxford Blue, in order to move up from second place to first.
The event consisted of three races and it was important that Val finished ahead of the Osprey from Great Moor SC in all races.
With 96 boats on the water, spotting the Osprey was difficult for Val who was representing Rutland Sailing Club and Rutland Sailability.
Val's chosen tactics were to start well, keep out of traffic and sail the course as fast as she could.
The conditions were shifty with strong gusts but long lulls, not totally Challenger weather.
Val had an anxious wait until Monday morning to know whether she had done enough or not and, as it turned out, she was ahead of the Osprey in every race.
Val said: "It was an exciting series.
"Winning the Masters and coming 13th overall is the highest place I have ever achieved in any Winter Sailjuice Series.
"The first three ladies were competing for their positions all the way through to the last event and I was pleased to finish third in the Lady Helms competition."
The end of series prizegiving will be held at the RYA Dinghy and Watersports Show at Farnborough.
Rutland Sailing Club has also played host to the University Keelboat League event.
Seven university teams took part while illness forced the Rutland side to withdraw at the last minute.
The format saw the event sailed in the four RS21 keelboats with the seven teams rotating in and out of the boats.
Each race was about 15 minutes in length and there were a total of 28 races.
Every team sailed in 16 races and against each of the other teams between eight and nine times over the course of the event.
The racing on Saturday was somewhat curtailed by very light winds or zero winds and only seven races were sailed.
The leading team on Saturday was Portsmouth Purple with four wins followed by Solent Irish with three wins and a second.
Sunday was forecast to give much more wind and, after an early light fog, it cleared just before the scheduled start to give a great breeze.
There was also quite a bit of fog among the competitors, but the 15 knot breeze soon blew away any remnants of it. This allowed the race team to run a record 21 races in a day on Sunday.
That left all the competitors exhausted but very happy with such great racing in perfect conditions.
The competition was intense on Sunday and the two leading teams started where they finished off on Saturday.
However, Portsmouth Blue had some poor results and Solent Irish powered ahead of the fleet winning several races in a row.
Solent Black was catching Portsmouth Purple who held on by a whisker to finish just a point clear.
Overall results: 1 Solent Irish 58 points (average finish position 1.38), 2 Portsmouth Purple 50 points (average finish position 1.88), 3 Solent Black 49 points (average finish position 1.94).
There are six events around the country, Rutland being the third held so far.
These teams will go forward to the University Keelboat Sailing finals to be held at Rutland on May 25-27, when there are at least 12 teams expected to compete based on the top teams over the six events.