Winning Team Alton Water Wipeouts Tushingham sponsored team         The Wipeouts pick up from where they left off

Team15's 2007 East Regional Champions, the Alton Water Wipeouts, picked up right where they left off last season, as they kept up their winning form at this weekend's (Sunday 4th May) opening east regional T15 inter-club event. After a winter of hard training, at their base at Alton Water, Stutton, near Ipswich, the team beat off stiff competition to clinch the first event victory of the season.

Held on the picturesque lake at Stanborough Park, Welwyn Garden City, Hertforshire, the event attracted one of the largest audiences for the sport with walkers and families stopping to watch the fun. RYA windsurf coach and T15 organiser Graham Colam commented: "We've never had so many of the general public at one of our events. The interest this event caused from the public was quiet a pleasant surprise to the centre staff who said that they had never had so many enquiries about windsurfing lessons."

Conditions were best described as benign, with winds of F1 and F2 on the Beaufort scale holding steady directly on to the launching beach. The courses were set to give cross-wind starts with a variation of beats, upwind legs and downwind blasts. The event attracted 16 windsurfers from three teams, Alton Water Wipeouts, Stanborough Stormers and Norwich Force 8th. This was the first time Stanborough entered the T15 series.

The Ipswich-based eight-strong team showed their supremacy by taking first place in four of the five classes, the 4.5m, the 5.5m, the 6.8m and the Bic Techno 6.8m.

In the base 3.5 metre class Stanborough Stormer's Chris Wright (12) used his knowledge of the local waters to good effect and finished in top spot with Robin Pearson (12), Norwich F8 in close second. In the next class up in rig size, the 4.5 metres Alton Water Wipeouts swept up all three top places with Matthew Barton (12) first, Jack Trollope (13) second and Zoe Deal (15) third (this will be Zoe's last year in T15, having reached the upper age limit for the competition).

The 5.5 metre class saw Alton's Dean Taylor (13) win all four races, with team mate Chris Hartley (12) second and Norwich Force 8th's Ryan Middleton (15) a close third. The larger rigged 6.8 metre class was combined with the Bic Techno 6.8 metre hi-tech class, which saw ex- Zone Squad member Tom Bennett-Lloyd (15) of Norwich Force 8th take the win, from his team mate Aaron Murphy (14) and Harriet White of Alton in joint second place. Joanna Hartley (14) of Alton came third.

A competitor to watch in the future is young Harriet Hudspith (12) of Seething near Norwich; "I've rarely seen someone with so much determination to give of their best. She's a star in the making," commented Graham. Harriet sails in the 4.5m class.

Making his debut in windsurf racing local boy Chris Wright, who won the 3.5m class commented after his T-15 baptism: "I'm going to stop kayaking and start windsurfing more and get all my friends to come too."