We’re excited to announce that Northampton Sailing Club, has been awarded Active Club of the Year 2026 by the Royal Yachting Association (RYA). We were also finalists in the Young Person’s Award 2026.
A big THANK YOU to everyone at the club who helps to make it such an active, friendly and award-winning club! We welcome people of all ages and levels of experience in sailing, windsurfing, wingfoiling, paddleboarding and kayaking.
Sailing Race Coaching
While membership is declining in many clubs, we’ve doubled our membership in the last couple of years and are actively encouraging more sailors out on the water. Last year we set up adult race sailing coaching to encourage more members to join in club racing, and around 30 people signed up for it. This morphed into a group whose abilities range from complete beginners through to experienced sailors who have raced before but would like to, as one of our members coined the phrase, ‘Be Less Last”!!
The coaching ran throughout the Summer and Autumn on a Tuesday evening last year and has already started this year, with onshore sessions on racing rules and theory before we head back onto the water in April.
Windsurf Coaching
In addition, six members of the windsurf group have trained to Intermediate Instructor level and have been running sessions for members interested in starting windsurfing or coming back to it after a break. We’ve had members aged from 10 through to 78 attend the sessions! They run on Sunday mornings and it’s great to see a strong and growing group of windsurfers out on the water each week.
The Young Person’s Award
With regard to the Young Person’s Award, we continue to foster our thriving Pirates club with 65 8-16 year-olds learning to sail or windsurf. The club has been awarded RYA Pathway Club status, and we’ve setup a Northampton Race Group (NRG) team who are offered extra race coaching to attend events to include the Northamptonshire Youth Series (NYS) and Topper Traveller opens. We’ve also bought two new Toppers and two new Fevas to support the NRG team in their events.
To book your place on any of our forthcoming events, go to: https://members.northamptonsailingclub.org/events