Barnt Green Sailing Club  The 2008 Barnt Green Junior Helm, held on Saturday 30th August. A report by Carl Taylor, Squadron Captain. This years Junior Helm was sailed in near perfect conditions with a bumper entry of  11 Oppies and 7 Cadets. The Oppies saw a large fleet with many young sailors competing in their first event of this kind. It was fantastic to see many people improving visibly in front of our eyes.   In the Oppies William, Mathew and Max walked away with first, second and third places in every race, but massive improvements were seen by many of the fleet with Annabel winning the most improved sailor prize.   The Cadet series saw Joe and Becky take an early lead but a failure to know the proper course saw them surrender the lead to Sam and Jake. Showing some excellent upwind sailing Sam and Jake were unlucky to lose their lead on the down wind.

In the second race Sam and Jake, Joe and Becky, and Jess and Freddie were all over the line at the start. This give Alice an early lead, Sam and Jake recovered quickly from their false start and sailed another excellent beat to get round the first mark just before the wind died, they then sailed into what looked like a commanding position in the race. On the last down wind Joe and Becky managed to overcome Sam and Jake to win the race and the series with a race to spare, The third race was then comfortably won by Joe. There was also a spectacular battle for thirs place between Alice Pickworth with Donald and newcomer to the fleet Jess Pickworth with Freddie. A fantastic start to the first race enabled Jess and Freddie to sail to a comfortable third place. But in the second race they capsized and retired setting up a barnstorming final race between the two boats. Jess and Freddie took an early lead which was overcome by Alice after the most impressive piece of spinnaker work seen at the club this year. Alice then had a moment of madness on the beat which enable Jess to overtake her. The two boats were then neck and neck going into the finish line with Alice managing to take the win.

A big thank you to Bob for being Race officer, Debbie for all the hard work to make the event happen and for the Galley, to Dawn, Mandy, Winnie and Bev for the Galley and to Jess, Kate and Max for the Coaching.

The full results were

Cadets	Race 1	Race 2	Race 3	Points	Position
Joe Taylor and Rebbeca Rowe	1	1	1	2	1
Sam Evans and Jake Baker	2	2	2	4	2
Alice Pickworth and  Donald Pickworth	4	3	3	6	3
Jess Pickworth and Freddie Lockett	3	7	4	7	4
Kate and Charlotte Rowe	5	4	5	9	5
Josiah and Ebba Ferguson	6	6	8	12	6
David Allenby and Tom Ben-field	7	7	6	13	7

Optimists	Race 1	Race 2	Race 3	Points	Position
William Lockett	1	1	1	2	1
Mathew Cross	2	2	2	4	2
Max Willcock	3	3	3	6	3
Edward Cartwright	4	4	4	8	4
Christian Lopes	6	5	6	11	5
Ellie Ainsworth	5	7	12	13	6
Hallam Wood	9	9	5	14	7
Saskia Inman	8	6	12	14	8
Annabel Cartwright	10	8	7	15	9
Joshua Lopes	7	10	12	17	10
Daniel Frost	11	11	12	22	11

We are grateful for the images sent to Carl  for inclusion in this report. Caption and more images will be added soon.

The one below was from a previous event.