After the Glossop team's Southport 12 Hour Race's prerace publicity last week, a third party has put out this press release:

A depleted youth squad from Glossop Sailing Club achieved 10th place out of a field of 28, their best ever result in the annual National Junior Twelve Hour Race, held at Southport, despite their sailing club withdrawing their support and leaving them high and dry without a boat on the day of the competition.

Team Captain, Tim Dobson, 18, from Glossop and Iona Ludlow, 17, from Stockport, both students at Cheadle & Marple Sixth Form College had spent hours with their teammates training for the event, only to receive news on their journey to Southport that the sailing club would not be supporting the team or providing a boat for them to sail in the event. Fellow sailors, South Windermere Sailing Club came to the rescue - they had a boat but needed additional crew members. For Tim, who last year was introduced to Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in recognition of his contribution to developing youth sailing, it was a bittersweet victory. As he explained,

“The Glossop Sailing Club Team had arrived full of enthusiasm and were eager to sail but unfortunately our boat failed to materialise. We are so thankful to South Windermere Sailing Club who were short of crew members and suggested that we merge with them to form a joint team ‘South Windermere & Glossop’. With a skeleton crew of four from each team we sailed their boat into the highest position that any boat from either club has ever completed the Southport 12 Hour Race!”

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Teammates: Iona Ludlow, Alex Hewitt and Glossop Team Captain, Tim Dobson.

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This was a truly remarkable achievement for both clubs and we know that we have made some friends for life. Whilst we were extremely thrilled with our result, I just felt so disappointed for our team members who could not compete. For us, this event is the highlight of the year and everyone had worked so hard on their preparation and training. The reasons for the club withdrawing its support are still unclear. They were well aware of the amount of work that had been undertaken and knew the arrangements for the day. We have done nothing different to what we have done in previous years and from that point of view, we were devastated.”

The Twelve Hour Race is a real challenge where the object is to cover more distance in the twelve hours than any other boat. Young sailors take turns to be on the water, two at a time, so the boat is going non stop. The field included a number of national champions and Great Britain sailors so the camaraderie amongst the new team was vital,

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Peter Murphy & Iona Ludlow from Glossop Sailing Club competing in the Southport 12 Hour.

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“It was quite windy, but nothing that we couldn’t handle,” said Tim. “We were crewing with people that we had never met before, but everyone just gelled together and we all had a brilliant time, but we missed our Glossop teammates. As a result of our success, we have now developed a relationship with South Windermere Sailing Club and we are investigating the possibilities of working together more in the future and competing in some more friendly races.”

Contact Tim: tdobson.net/contact

About Tim