Shropshire Sailing Club

What a fabulous Saturday ‘Brush Up On Your Skills’ (BUOYS) session. 14 boats, 21+ sailors and a range of ages from 6 to 76 (although I’ve not officially checked that age!)

The Family Friendly race that followed was expertly coached and encouraged by our on water experienced sailors and enjoyed by all.

We all look forward to our next BUOYS and Family Friendly Race in September.

A few photos of the eclipse last night at Shropshire Sailing Club

Super Adult and Youth/Juniors refresher sessions today. Lots of boats on the Mere and some valuable coaching and guidance from our team of fabulous instructors!

This weekends RYA courses reached a successful conclusion for our Level one "Start Sailing" Dinghy and Keelboat Adult sailors, together with our "Stage one" youngsters. Well done everyone!

A huge thank you to all our fantastic instructors who help make these courses so special.

So Shropshire Sailing Club’s Mid Summer series continued today with the usual varied winds speeds. As usual the racing was hard fought but great fun with 3 different winning boats in the 3 races.

What a fantastic and busy few days we’ve had at Shropshire Sailing Club.

On Thursday, we had great fun hosting Welshampton and Newtown schools with sailing, power boat rides and pond dipping.

Friday and Saturday saw 2 of our brilliant instructors, John and Brian, run a Power Boat Course, where 5 of our member all passed their PB2 qualifications - congratulations.

Friday also saw our first Friday evening “Sail and BBQ” with 8 boats out on the water.

Then we finished off the weekend today with 12 boats competing in some really tight racing in fickle winds, as part of our mid summer racing series.

Upcoming Dinghy Start Racing course

Once you have completed a Stage 3 or Level 2 Dinghy course, you will be confident enough to sail a Dinghy anywhere on the Mere, under a moderate wind strength. Well done. But what next? To make sure you don't lose your hard won skills, keep sailing regularly. All the things you struggle to remember today will slowly turn into a reflex, if you keep practicing. You don't think about how you ride a bike - you just get on it and peddle! But you can only do this because you practiced. And the same is true of sailing - so do keep practicing.

To get further advice and reminders, take part in the coaching sessions we offer at Shropshire Sailing Club:
Youth & Adult Coaching (free to book on the club web pages)
BUOYS: Brush Up On Your Skills - single topic sessions
WOW : Women On the Water - confidence building with people in similar positions on the learning curve
The next step is to join in the races. You may think the racers on a Sunday are an elite group of the best sailors. Not so - I'm one of them! What you will see by joining a race, is how much faster some sailors manage to go in the same wind as you. So follow them round and copy what they do. Ask them why they do what they do and how they do it. They will answer with enthusiasm - because they love sailing! You can learn an awful lot from being last. But you will improve. Come and have a look at the racing on a Sunday, listen to the chatter, people swapping ideas, offering advice, feel the excitement. If you want a closer look, join the Race Officer on the committee boat, an experienced racing sailor. You will quickly learn to see the difference between a boat sailed well and one that isn't!

The start of a race can be very daunting: lots of boats all jostling for position, rules to remember and the clock running down.

There is a training course to help you understand what is going on and how to join in:

Dinghy Start Racing Saturday 15th August 2026

A course for new sailors wishing to start racing. It will build your confidence and general racing knowledge by learning the skills needed to enter and complete a race. This course takes you through the fundamentals of getting off the start line and round the course
8 hours on-water tuition.
This builds on the skills learnt in Stage 3 or Level 2 Dinghy courses.
The course is available to book now on the club web pages.

A damp day at Whitemere today, but some hardy souls got some valuable practice in with our instructors, as part of our Refresher programme. Meanwhile Pat appeared to be sailing around a lot of masts.....

Congratulations to our group of sailors, who all successfully completed their RYA Level 3 'Better Sailing' course over the weekend. Well Done All!