Fair Winds and Fast Starts : Congratulations to Our RYA Level 3 Graduates

Published 2:51pm on 28 Sep 2026

Our Thursday evening Level 3 Better Sailing and Start Racing course ran over 13 weeks, led by Dom and Colin, and with Alice, Dave, Eddie, Murray, Paul, Sam and Lindsey taking part.

We had just about every sort of weather to work with, which meant there was plenty of sailing, plenty of theory and, inevitably, plenty of talking from Dom. Colin kept everyone honest on the racing side, with starts, tactics, rules and all the bits that begin to matter once you stop just sailing around and start trying to beat the boat next to you.

One of the really good things about running this course on a Thursday is that it starts to bring our developing sailors into the normal life of the club. As the weeks go on, hopefully, they stop feeling like people on a course and start becoming part of the Thursday racing, sailing against the rest of us and, occasionally, giving the established order a bit of a fright.

I'm still not going to forget you leading to the windward mark, Jason!

We also managed a first for the course this year when two of the group decided to get married halfway through it. Highly inconvenient from a training point of view, obviously.

Congratulations to Murray and Alice.

A really enjoyable 13 weeks, with some great sailing, lots of progress and, most importantly, more people now properly involved in racing at Pennine.

Last updated 11:24am on 30 September 2026