Welcome to Leigh and Lowton Sailing Club.
Leigh and Lowton Sailing Club is run by its members to promote and enjoy the sport of sailing, and other water sports. Although the club is mainly a dinghy racing club, we welcome anyone who wants to sail a dinghy or windsurfer, or paddle a canoe, or a Standup paddle board. Throughout the year we also have organised open water swimming, we are a NOWCA venue and sessions can be booked through https://actio.nowca.org.
In terms of sailing dinghies, we are open to all monohull dinghies less than 21′ and sailability dinghies. We currently have fleets of Lasers, Solos, RS400s, RS200s, D1s, Enterprises, Wayfarers, and youth boats such as Optomists, Fevas and toppers. In addition a wide variety of other class of boats ranging from an RS800 to a Wanderer, an Albacore to a D0. Check out our Sailing and racing section for more details of our racing.
If you’re new to sailing or just curious, you might want to know how do you get started. To begin with you might want to book yourself onto our annual ‘Try sailing open day’ . If you want to take it further, we run RYA ‘start sailing’ and ‘start racing’ courses (check the ‘Learn to sail’ section for more details), and have reguar Improvers sessions, and Friday evenings we have a Youth sailing programme (8-16 yr) ‘Adventures on water’. For those that don’t have their own boat we have club boats that can be hired by club members (look under the Members section for details). These boats are also used for our training courses, maintained and insured for club use.
We take water safety seriously at LLSC. Whenever there are club activities on the water, we have high speed rescue craft on the water, manned by trained volunteers. Every year at the start of the season we run the RYA first aid course, open to all for a small fee, free for our club sailing Instructors.
The club has great facilities and is hired by other groups (an Art club and a wellbeing group) . We have a great Galley (canteen) run by Val who does great cakes and other great nosh that sustains our hungry sailors. We also have a members run bar (there is nearly always a key holder somewhere on the premesis!). We have good changing facilities, although we are aware that in our changing society that we need to adapt and change to improve their suitability and some changes are already in place to make provision for family changing spaces and privacy in showering. Our facilities include a sizable carpark (with fob or keycode gate entry and security cameras) and a recently tiered and drained camping field, as well as a training building, a big dighy park and a wildlife area.
We are also working on our environmental impact with a plan to install solar power to add to our general care for the sailing environment we enjoy. However, we know there is much more we can do so if its your thing, have a chat to Sean, who does amazing job coordinating the work on all our facilities.
Throughout the year we host championship events for a variety of dinghy classes, and other events, such as the IronMan event, as well as our regatta and, of particular note, is our Sunrise to Sunset team racing endurance event (S2S); you will find details on our home page or under ‘News’. Its a great event in the middle of summer with lots of racing, fun and socialising. If you have any queries about any of our open events or as a class you would like to enquire about holding an event at the club please contact Nik James.
The club is situated at the western end of Pennington Flash, a 70 hectare lake near Leigh in Lancashire, within easy reach of the M6 and the A580 West Lancs road.
It is our desire to be a friendly, welcoming sailing community that is more than the topnotch racing club that it is, but to be a sailing club for all people, of all backgrounds, of all ages and abilities – from champions to complete novices, enjoying our sport, nuturing our sailing skills, our friendships and our wider community. If this is something that appeals to you then why not join in?.
If you want to know more about joining, check out our ‘Join Us‘ section, or if you have queries please contact our membership secretary; Adrienne Yarwood. If you want to come down for a visit, its wise to contact us ahead so we can welcome you. You can just turn up – you will be equally welcome – just make yourself know when you arrive.
We look forward to meeting you!
Every blessing
Tim Coleman
Commodore