Super sailors to take on sea and mountains

By Peter Sutton

A team of sailors from Brent will be taking on treacherous seas and towering mountains in a race to raise urgently needed funds.
Five dinghy sailors from the Seahorse Sailing Club on the Welsh Harp - Brent Reservoir - will be setting off on the June 28 for a long distance challenge.
The team will be racing their boat the length of the Irish Sea and stopping along the way to run up the three highest mountains in the United Kingdom.
They are hoping to raise urgently needed funds for a replacement safety boat for use on the reservoir and for clubhouse development .
The PowerBar Three Peaks Yacht Race begins in Barmouth in North Wales and entails racing through the treacherous seas and tidal streams off the coasts of North Wales, the North West Coast of England and Scotland, stopping briefly along the way to race on foot up and down Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis.
Sailing in Skipper Graham Gibson's boat, which is usually based in St Mawes Cornwall, the Seahorse Team has already had to sail for a week to get the boat to Barmouth in North Wales in time for the start.
The race itself will take up to another week and following a rest in Scotland teams from Seahorse will move the boat back from Fort William In Scotland to Cornwall via the east coast of Ireland.
During the race itself the team will sail 389 nautical miles, risking sandbanks, rocks and fierce tides.
The sailors aboard will get little rest as the race is continuous, and the two runners in the team must complete 72 miles and 14,000 feet of climbing to reach the summits of Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis. No easy task when you may have to run at night, unsteady on your feet due to seasickness.
Seahorse Sailing Club invite people of all ages and abilities to learn to sail with them and to join in with regular dinghy racing and social activities on the Welsh Harp Reservoir.
The club is run entirely by unpaid volunteers and is accredited by the Royal Yachting Association as an approved training centre. For more information see www.seahorsesc.co.uk or phone: 07855207476.