Meet Sunderland's recently crowned UK sailing champion Bill Maughan

Musto Skiff UK champion Bill Maughan talks about winning the national event.

Transcript

00:00 Okay then Billy, can you tell me a bit about the competition you won and how you feel about

00:04 coming in first place?

00:05 Yeah, so it was the Musto Skiff UK National Championships.

00:09 It was held down in Cornwall in Falmouth.

00:12 It's probably the fifth Nationals I've done, never broken the top five just yet so I certainly

00:19 wasn't expecting to win but absolutely over the moon about it really, I'm really, really

00:22 chuffed.

00:23 Something I've trained quite hard for this year so it's nice that I had a third place

00:27 at the World Championships earlier this year which was great, getting on the podium so

00:31 it was great to back that up really with a Nationals win.

00:34 I know you live in Seabourn, how did you get into sailing then?

00:39 It's a bit of a family tradition really.

00:41 My grandad used to do it, Ian Oliver, back in the day when he was in the shipyards and

00:48 he got my uncles into it and they managed to get me into it I suppose.

00:52 I had a couple of school friends that sailed as well at Sunderland Yacht Club and I started

00:57 going down there when I was 12 or 13 and just loved it really.

01:01 If anyone reads this, watches this and is interested in sailing, what should they do?

01:07 Get yourself down to the sailing club, that's all I did.

01:09 It's based just by Roker Beach, just along Marine Walk and you can turn up and there's

01:16 boats down there, you can give the training a go, it's a real welcoming, friendly club.

01:21 You don't need your own boat to go down and learn to sail.

01:24 You know that's all I did, that's all me and my friends did really when we were young and

01:28 it's great.

01:29 What's next for you in terms of sailing competition?

01:33 So I've got another World Championships next year to train for now, do some winter training.

01:37 We've got it in our home nation, it was in Italy earlier this year and it's going to

01:42 be on the south coast of the UK next year so fingers crossed I can finish on the podium

01:47 again.

01:48 Have a good look.

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