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Fourteen travelling competitors from far and wide and ranging in age from 10 years old to 70 plus joined the one home boat of George Love to compete a six race card over two days at the idyllic setting of Carsington Water in Derbyshire.

The Inland Championships and final Summer TT of the year is always a popular event in the Sprint 15’s year-round events calendar.  Historically, this always takes place as part of the Grafham Cat Open – where the Sprint 15s make up the largest fleet at the event.   But this year, the weather intervened and the effects of the drought meant that Grafham did not have the capacity to host all the fleets it would usually invite to the Cat Open.  As such, the Sprint 15s found themselves without an event with two weeks to go until Rutland Sailing Club stepped in and saved the day at very short notice.

After a challenging Summer season in 2021, where we just about managed to hold a full Summer Series, despite Covid considerations – we hoped that the 2022 Summer series might be a little more straightforward.   Little did we suspect that Mother Nature was going to throw some different challenges our way in the form of the weather!   With hindsight, the early indications were there as we lost our January Winter TT to fog and our February Winter TT to Storm Eunice.  But adverse weather does not affect Summer Events, right?   Well, it nearly did but for different reasons!

Stewartby sailing club hosted the first round of the Sprint 15 2022/2023 winter series. Thirteen visitors and 7 home boats were greeted by very unseasonal conditions, with warm temperatures and plenty of sunshine.

After a quick briefing from race officer Richard Hargreaves, the sailors prepared themselves to head out onto the water.

With just 30 minutes until the scheduled start time, event organiser Scott Wilcox decided it was perhaps time to get his boat ready, unfortunately it was still packed up on the trailer from the previous event. With help from all the Stewartby sailors the quickest rigging of a Sprint 15 ever was witnessed.

Sailors from Marconi, Grafham, Draycote, Yorkshire Dales and Shanklin Sailing Clubs gathered on the start line to commence the first race. Race officers for the day were Tim Case, Richard and Steve Pell. After a timing malfunction the first race start was repeated with all boats hot to trot on the start line for a competitive start, with much shouting for “water”. The fleet screeched up the beat with some notable super human hiking from Liam, Jason and Jen as they tussled for the prize of first boat to the windward mark. 

The Dart 15 Winter Series continued with its fourth Winter TT at Datchet Water Sailing Club.  The February TT does not have a great track record – with the last few years lost to either Covid or storm force winds.   So it was with some irony that competitors monitored the forecast in the prior week showing a hefty 1-2 knots.  However, by Thursday the forecast was showing 5-7 knots and that was enough to entice 9 visitors to turn out for the event

The Gill Dart 15 Winter TT got underway in near perfect sailing conditions for the 13 hardy competitors braving a cool, fresh mainly South Westerly breeze with a steady 22 knots on the start line for race 1 of 3 scheduled back to back races.

The Dart 15s are celebrating their forty-fifth anniversary as well as a welcome return to the name Dart 15 this year.  Their first Summer TT under both banners was held at Marconi Sailing Club on the beautiful River Blackwater on the Essex East Coast.

Thirteen Dart 15 travellers joined the one local sailor at Rutland for our May TT as part of the wider Rutland Cat Open comprising six fleets and nearly 70 boats.

After a long, wet spring, competitors were finally greeted with two days of sunshine with a very fresh breeze from the north or north east.  Champagne sailing conditions with a very healthy breeze, plenty of gusts and some tricky shifts across the weekend allowing many competitors to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory over the six races.