PORTLAND sailor David Ankers is celebrating his first win at the Blind Sailing Nationals more than a decade after giving up sailing because of his sight loss.

The 44-year-old sailed to victory with helm Andrew Cattermole from Shrewsbury, who is also blind, and their sighted tactician Adam Parry at the regatta.

Eight Sonar keelboats competed in the Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club-hosted event, in two fleets: B1 for those registered as completely blind and B2/3/4 for varying degrees of visual impairment.

An action-packed schedule of five races were staged on day one because extreme winds blew in and cancelled racing on the second and final day.

Ankers, who began losing his sight at the age of 24, is registered B2 – one step off complete blindness.

Together with Cattermole and Parry, he won the B2/3/4 class overall, scoring three bullets – race wins – and two second places.

Ankers praised Parry for missing his own GP14 dinghy regatta to volunteer at the event, providing a vital communication role for the visually-impaired sailors.

He added: “We were very impressed to win as we had never sailed together before.

“We even beat Andrew’s brother Liam who is the silver medallist at the Blind Sailing Worlds in Japan.”

Ankers and his wife Anaick are family friends of Olympic silver medallist Stuart Bithell and were inspired to move to Portland from Rochdale after visiting Bithell’s home in Weston in the summer of 2011.

Bithell’s father Les had previously introduced Ankers to sailing when he was commodore of Hollingworth Lake Sailing Club, near Rochdale, having worked together at BAE Sys-tems.

Ankers gave up sailing his Firefly dinghy, aged 30, when he couldn’t see the race marker buoys to know when to turn.

He was inspired to take up the sport again this year through the Dorset Blind Association.

After a taster session with the late Jeff Cole, who passed away in September, Ankers was introduced to the Blind Sailing UK team via Bithell’s uncle Richard Whitworth.

Ankers has now bought a Laser dinghy with his wife. He praised the support he has received from Blind Sailing UK, run by the inspirational Lucy Hodges, Chesil Sailability – a local sailing group which allows disabled people to make full use of the Wey-mouth and Portland National Sailing Academy’s equipment and Castle Cove Sailing Club, which has a real family feel.

He said: “It’s great to be able to do something again. I can’t drive a car, I can’t ride a bike, when I’m sailing I’m in control of something again. You don’t feel like you’re a passenger, it’s good.”

* Chesil Sailability are currently in the process of getting some new boats, which will enable their visually-impaired members, accompanied by sighted tacticians, to take part in the Castle Cove Sailing Club’s Wednesday race nights.

* Find out more about Blind Sailing UK at blindsailing.net

* For Chesil Sailability, visit the website chesilsailability.org.uk

* The Dorset Blind Association is online at dorsetblind.org.uk