The newly established sailing team at Britan­nia Royal Naval Col­lege have demonstrated their prowess on the water, taking second place at the World Na­val Academy Champ­ionships.

Sailing teams representing naval academies from across the globe met in Livorno, Italy for the 32nd edition of the event.

Competing against more than 20 boats from countries including Brazil, Chile, Cana­da, Germany, the UAE, Bahrain and Serbia, the BRNC team enjoyed a tough event in challenging conditions.

The championship was sailed in Trident 16 dinghies, provided by the Italian Naval Acad­emy and were allocated at random during the opening ceremony.

Thankfully the boat allocation of number 13 did not prove too un­lucky for the Dart­mouth team.

Team BRNC consisted of officer cadets George Wilmot (skipper), Fiona Cook and Chris Pascoe, all within their first few months of initial officer training.

The team optimised the pre-regatta training period and were put through their paces by BRNC sailing officer and coach Lieutenant Darren Roach.

Much of this time focused on finessing the technique for dealing with large waves which characterised the racing area in front of the Italian Naval Academy.

The racing began with very light winds, meaning many boats struggled to work their way around the course. The BRNC team, however, stayed focused and scored some good early results, with the UAE being the main competition on the first day.

The following day brought blustery and exhilarating conditions with even larger waves and gusts of up to 28 knots.

BRNC led once more, but after several capsizes among the fleet, the race officer was forced to abandon racing for the day.

With Saturday also achieving no race re­sults, the pressure was piled on for the last day of racing.

Sunday was characterised by some very close racing between BRNC, Italy and the UAE officer cadets.

On completion of racing, BRNC were on winning points, but the close racing had resulted in protests by some of the teams.

After a two-hour protest hearing, BRNC received a controversial disqualification from the penultimate race, dropping them into second place overall. This left Italy to take gold and the UAE team bronze.