Northern Ireland Youth Sailors Compete at Eric Twiname 2022 Championships

4th May 2022

Bobby Driscoll - fifth overall in the Toppers at the Eric Twiname 2022 Championships Credit: RYANI

Nine young sailors from Northern Ireland travelled to England last weekend to compete in the Eric Twiname 2022 Championships at Rutland Sailing Club in the East Midlands.

The first Eric Twiname event took place in 1986 and has seen thousands of young sailors, including Olympians past and present take part. Sailing stars Ben Ainslie and Iain Percy were among the early winners of the regatta before going on to Olympic greatness.

The regatta took place on the 3000-acre Rutland Water and is named in memory of legendary sailor, author and journalist Eric Twiname. It is regarded by many young racers as a rite of passage as they continue their journey to become top-level competitors.

Twiname made his name in sailing, winning numerous national titles in a range of dinghy classes, as well as in team racing where he captained the British Universities Sailing Association.

Daniel Palmer of Ballyholme YC - 4th overall in the ILCA 4

Northern Ireland had six compete in the huge 110 strong Topper 5.3 fleet over five races and best performer was Bobby Driscoll of Royal North and Ballyholme Yacht Clubs on Belfast Lough. He came fifth overall with results never above ninth. His best placing was a third.

Autumn Halliday of Strangford Lough YC and Ballyholme clocked a seventh as her best result finishing in 27th place. She was closely followed by Cormac Byrne from Strangford Sailing Club and Ballyholme whose best placings were two ninths. Also competing were Emily McAfee, Isabelle Nixon, and Hugo Boyd also of Ballyholme

In the ILCA4 fifty-five strong fleet were Daniel Palmer of Royal North and BYC who finished in an excellent fourth slot with a third in the last race. In that fleet also was Callum Jackson from Coleraine and Portrush on the North Coast and Lucy Ives from the opposite end of the region, Carlingford Lough Yacht Club on the South Down coast.

RYA Northern Ireland posted on Facebook “ Some great results and lessons learned by all. No time to rest though as we are back training next weekend with our Youth Performance Topper Sailors”.

Published in Youth Sailing

Tagged under

About The Author

Betty Armstrong

Email The Author

Betty Armstrong is Afloat and Yachting Life's Northern Ireland Correspondent. Betty grew up racing dinghies but now sails a more sedate Dehler 36 around County Down

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven’t put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full–time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.