Southport 24 Hour Race

The West Lancashire Yacht Club 24 Hour Race, has always been more commonly known as the Southport 24 Hour Race.
The race is a national endurance race for classic sailing dinghies (Enterprise, GP14, Lark and Firefly) held in Southport, Merseyside, England. and is organised by the West Lancashire Yacht Club.
The race, now in its 54th year, has a long history and has always been held in September, with the 2021 24 Hour Race taking place over the weekend of 11/12 September. The race was not sailed in the year 2000 due to the fuel crisis and again in 2020 due to the Covid 19 Pandemic. An early race in the mid 1980s was abandoned during the night because of the fierce weather conditions.
The average turnout, which has stabilised in recent years, is between 60 and 70 boats, although the 50th anniversary race held in 2016 attracted 82 entries. Recent entry numbers have been held up by the fact that many of the competing clubs now enter two, three or even four teams.
The race starts at 12 noon on the Saturday. The competing teams then race their dinghies around the marine lake (a man made feature containing 2 islands and an interesting, concrete jetty on the eastern side) for the next 24 hours, finishing at noon on Sunday. Most entries are teams of up to 12 crew members. The crews take turns to sail their dinghy in the race. The crews are not permitted to sail in more than one team during the event. However, there is nothing (other than exhaustion) to prevent a crew of two from sailing the whole event in one boat, 2 people sailing non stop was successfully sailed by Adam McGovern and Chris Robinson of Hollingworth Lake Sailing Club in the 2007 race.
As with all sailing events, weather is the important element. The other important feature of the 24 hour race is the lack of light at night. During the hours of darkness, the helm and crew of each dinghy must keep watch for other boats (often capsized) and the curious concrete jetty mentioned earlier. Colliding with one or the other can be very dangerous and may even cause the team to abandon further participation in the event.