Sutton Bingham Sailing Club

Sutton Bingham Sailing Club was founded in the early 1970’s on the reservoir that it shares its name with. The club initially sailed only in adopted classes, if you didn’t own one of them you didn’t sail. Originally the classes were fleets of Mirrors, Marauders (or Mirror 14s), Miracles and Enterprises. As plastic boats became more prevalent 420s, Toppers, Solos and Lasers found their way to the front. Eventually, and despite many arguments in club AGM’s, the adopted class ideal disappeared to allow any class of boat with a Portsmouth Number to sail at the club. All sorts of weird and wonderful classes have sailed here, even including a Flying Dutchman at one point, although it should be said it was a little large really for the lake. This lead to the introduction of the maximum length rule meaning that these wonderful boats wouldn’t be seen on the water again. Although any class of boat could be sailed at the club, racing still was mostly class racing, with a small menagerie fleet racing solely under the PY scheme. These days that has gone and everyone races together under PY racing in 4-5 series a year. There is now a Club Championship race where the top crew wins the coveted accolade.