On Thursday 29th October 16 Mirror dinghies came to Yorkshire Dales Sailing club. A range of people attended from national junior squad members to recent Mirror converts who had just started sailing. They all had in common a desire - to have fun!

Yorkshire Dales SC was the perfect venue with its brand new clubhouse, a stark contrast to the portacabins which were the changing rooms for the last 15 years.

Once everyone had rigged their boats and eaten a few too many bacon butties for the current wind conditions, we all piled into the new training room, which was fitted with impressively bright orange chairs! Our head coach for this couple of days was Dave Woodhead who coached the national zone squad last year and will be coaching the northern zone squad in 2010. Beth Gray who has had many successes in the Mirror with her brother Ed was assistant coach. They recently won the Inland Championships at Windermere.

34 Mirrors gathered on the south coast in great sunshine at Itchenor on the 5th & 6th September for the Southern Championships which also incorporated the 2009 Youth and Junior championships and a Southern Traveller event. It was the first championships since the successful Nationals and Worlds in Pwllheli earlier in the summer and a number of regular competitors were missing having moved on to other classes. However, there was a good turn out of local boats bringing new faces to the fleet a couple of boats from Cornwall and l from the North travelled from Windermere.The race officer set 7 great courses throughout the weekend which tested local knowledge and sailing skills.