Notts County is one of the first clubs in the country to be awarded RYA (Royal Yaching Association – the sailing governing body) Pathway Club Status, a testament to hard work by many volunteer members both recent and in the past. A key to this is our Saturday Club, RYA Training section and Youth Race Squad (YRS) which after the pandemic was led by Stephanie Gunn, then taken over by  John Gathergood and Gordon Burton last year. To find out more look on the YRS page. The club also has Junior starts in the club series.

Notts County has been a pilot club, and was visited by the national RYA team last year, the bid was led by Ross Ryan and Neil Chadborn, supported by the Exec and sailing Committees. Ross appeared at the Dinghy show recently saying “The Pathway Club programme provides an ideal framework for those clubs wanting to set-up / run high level race development for junior club racers – inspiring the next generation into our great sport. Notts County wanted to embrace the new initiative and conducted a broad review of what best practice looked liked – we have been committed to junior racing for many years and were really keen to get involved. We are looking forward to access to quality materials which will help our coaches be even more inspirational for the young sailors.”

The scheme is aimed at making junior racing more affordable, accessible and engaging. The RYA Pathway Club scheme is a new programme to identify and develop clubs around the UK to provide affordable, excellent sailing and coaching for junior racers. It bears many of the aims and hallmarks of Team 15 windsurfing initiative and builds on them, Team 15 has led to many National and Olympic champions and in our club, Emily Hall, Duncan Monaghan and Richard Potter being notable present and past participants, all competed or are competing at National & International level.

Th Pathway scheme aims to develop a network of high-quality clubs – or collectives of smaller clubs (Pathway Hubs) – across the country that create fun racing in an accessible environment where young racers can develop great fundamental skills and feel part of a bigger team. Our club will focus on the following recognised junior classes (Topper, RS Tera, RS Feva, ILCA 4 and Techno) which are available for youngsters to use to provide an easily-accessed, high-quality and – most importantly – fun race training programme that leads to more regular participation and racing.

The key being to develop an active junior community, that fosters a lifelong love of sailing, the club will encourage participation as a team to represent the club or hub at regional events. Making friends at a young age in the sport lasts a lifetime.

This will require more volunteers and we hope parents and others will get very involved both in logistics and maybe training up to help as instructors, boat drivers or possibly coaches.

Next month there is a youth RYA Start Race course proposed over Easter holidays. The Exec has agreed to fund this course for young members, the RYA say that Sailing and knowledge to at least the standard of the Stage 3 in the Youth Sailing, Scheme is required. It is a great introduction to racing, and of course if there is demand we can run an adult course alongside a dinghy adult course. Members just sign in to SCM and sign up here https://members.ncsc.org.uk/event/1160227