Karl Cremona and Will Camilleri, Malta’s top two ranked Optimist sailors, representing the Malta Young Sailors Club, have just returned from a week of racing in Holland.

For the first three days the boys were invited to join the Swedish Optimist Team to a pre-event racing clinic. The Swedes have attended every one of Malta’s Euromed Regattas since 2000 and, as a result, have built a good solid friendship with the sailors of the Malta Young Sailors Club, so much so that when they organised their clinic prior to this years’ Braassemermeer event in The Netherlands, they invited Malta’s top sailors to join.

The Optimist Sailing Dinghy, the largest junior class in the World, is an internationally recognised one design single handed sailing craft, where only sailors under the age of 16 years are eligible to contest in this class racing.

Following the race clinic the local boys then participated in the regatta which included a total of 270 Optimist sailors mainly from Northern Europe but also the US. This was top level competitive racing and in view of the large fleet the race committee used the first three days of racing as heats to segregate the fleet into Gold, Silver and Bronze.

Both Maltese competitors finished in the Gold fleet, in itself a great honour for the MYSC. Overall Karl Cremona finished 35th and Will Camilleri 76th out of the total of 270 sailors.

This impressive result once again gives credit to the Malta Young Sailors Club, established only ten years ago, by a group of ‘sailing aficionados’ parents to encourage and assist their young children with their sailing enthusiasm. The founder and Commodore of the Club is John Ripard Jr. while the club’s coach is Jean-Paul Fleri Soler, both of whom have their children amongst the club members.

During their stay in Holland the Malta Team met many other young sailors who confirmed their intention to come and participate in the sixth edition of the EUROMED Malta Championship due to be held in December. This now established Optimist Class Championship last year drew to Malta 109 competitors from 11 countries.