by Sailing Secretary Keith Videlo

Following the government’s roadmap on Monday (22nd February) regarding lifting of the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions for England, we are pleased to outline our plan of how and when we will all be back sailing. As ever, this will be subject to the prevailing government restrictions.

Unfortunately, the two spring qualifiers in March at WPNSA are too early in the roadmap and we have been forced to cancel them. We will not be trying to re-schedule them. For those wanting to enter Worlds or European events and have not yet qualified, the UKLA is prepared to give some discretion on places this year.

New events for 2021

Looking ahead, there are some new events in the UKLA diary.

1. We plan to run a U21 Open at WPNSA just after Easter for all three rigs. Date to be confirmed shortly.

2. On 8/9 May we plan to run an Open event at WPNSA with ILCA 4 & 7s on Saturday and ILCA 6 on Sunday.

We will be looking for volunteers to run both above events, if you can help then please sign up here.

Fifty years of the Class

This year is our 50th anniversary and we plan to celebrate the success of our class with a few special events.

Stokes Bay SC, in conjunction with UKLA, are planning to hold a 50-year anniversary celebration event on 19/20 June. The event will be open to ILCA 6 / 7 rigs over 2 days, with a meal on the Saturday night. With Stokes Bay giving their normal warm friendly welcome, this promises to be a fantastic event, make sure you get your entry in early to avoid disappointment. Watch the website for further details.

13-18 August sees the annual National Championships at WPNSA where we plan to continue our 50th anniversary celebrations.

All 3 events will be added to the UKLA Sailingfast Youth Series and can therefore count towards qualification towards ILCA and EurILCA Championships where the individual events allow.

Don’t forget our Super Grand Prix events which will also be part of this year’s celebration.

Hopefully after a difficult start to the year, by the time we get to summer we will back to a busy sailing program.