This Is Guernsey

James Chapple in action last year.

EIGHTEEN-year-old James Chapple has finished eighth at the Royal Yachting Association National Youth Championships – the best male youth result ever achieved by a Guernsey sailor.

The event was held at Pwllheli Sailing Club, north Wales, over a five-day period and more than 260 youths aged 18 and under competed.

The championships are used as trials and selections for inclusion in British youth squads.  Chapple has been a British youth squad member for the last three years but has been competing in the Laser Standard dinghy for only the previous 12 months.

The top 25 of the country’s youths competed in the Laser Standard and it is the class of boat currently campaigned at the Olympics.

The Laser sailors were on the water for an average of six hours a day in order to complete 10 of the 14 originally scheduled races.

Unfortunately, four races were lost to adverse weather conditions on day two of the competition.

Going into the last day Chapple was positioned in 10th place overall.

Only two races were held because of time constraints and were held in wind strengths of five to 10 knots in very variable and unreliable direction.

In race nine, Chapple reached the first mark of the course in 11th position.

He steadily gained throughout the race only to be denied a sixth place by a photo finish of four boats, which relegated him to ninth at the end.

A better performance ensued in race 10.

Following a bad start at the opposite end of the line from the start boat, Chapple moved out to the left-hand side of the course of the first windward leg when he spotted more wind.

His strategy was vindicated with a fourth place at the first mark of the course.

That position was maintained to the third mark but distance was gained on race leader Tom Hayes, whom Chapple had to be at least one place behind to gain an overall place position in the championship.

On the next windward leg, Chapple skilfully used the shifting conditions to his advantage and reached the fourth mark in second place behind Stuart Godwin, the ultimate winner of the race and event, and one place ahead of Hayes.

The first three changed frequently over the next four legs, with Chapple concluding his series with a third in the race behind Godwin and Hayes.

In the final analysis, Chapple had done enough in the last race to move his final position two places to finish eighth overall with Hayes one point behind in ninth.

‘This is a good result for me,’ said Chapple.

‘I finished only one place behind the current best ranked youth sailor in the country, Eiffion Mon, who was one of the precompetition favourites and currently in the full Olympic development squad.

‘This demonstrates the strength of youth sailing in the country where any of the top 10 have a chance of winning an event and it augurs well for the 2012 Olympics.’

The winner was Godwin, who won last year’s event and has been a close friend of Chapple for eight years.

Godwin will be the sole British Laser Class representative at the Youth World Championships in Denmark in July.

Chapple now awaits the deliberation of the British selectors at the RYA for his further inclusion in the British squad and membership of British teams that attend major world and European events.