Ben Ainslie, Britain's 1996 Olympic silver medallist and reigning world Laser champion, leads a galaxy of stars at the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club's Endeavour Trophy next month.

Ainslie, currently in Sydney competing in the pre-Olympic Regatta, will dash across to Burnham for the CGU-sponsored Champion of Champions event on October 9-10, just days after arriving back in Britain from Australia.

Ainslie, the current International Sailing Federation world single-handed champion and European champion, is Britain's best hope of sailing gold at the Sydney Olympics next year.

GP Fourteen national champion Richard Estaugh, the Endeavour Trophy holder, will defend his title and single-handed champions Nick Craig (OK) and Richard Stenhouse (Finn), plus Mirror champion Phillip Smith havs also entered.

The unique invitation event is specifically for national champions, who line up to do battle in identical RS400s over eight gruelling races. The event gets its name from the British America s Cup J-Class entry Endeavour, which competed for the cup in 1934 against the United States defender Rainbow.

At the last moment, Endeavour s professional crew went on strike and amateur yachtsmen from the RCYC stepped in to crew her, and almost pulled off a sensational victory, leading an acrimonious series 2-0 and being unlucky not to win the crucial third race before finally succumbing 4-2.

The trophy itself is a 3ft tall solid silver replica of Endeavour and was presented to the RCYC by Beecher Moore, one of the Endeavour crew, and has been raced for since 1961.

Maldon Yacht Club brothers, Iain and Richard Marshall found competition a bit hot at the recent Snipe world championships in Spain or, at least Richard did.

Their hopes of success, or even a high finish, were wrecked after three races when Richard, 22, was taken ill and ended up in a Spanish hospital, a victim of the stifling heat at Santiago de La Ribera, near Alicante.

Younger brother Philip, 18, who a week earlier had finished 16th in the world junior championships at Club de Mar Almeria, took Richard s place, with Iain, 24, but they clearly were not in the mood to concentrate on racing and finished well down the top-flight fleet.

But the Marshalls, who competed in the last world championships, hope to make it third time lucky in South America in 2001.

Stone Sailing Club pair Russell Jelley and Caroline Barnett recovered from an incident-packed blustery Saturday to win the club's Hornet Open meeting at the weekend.

Jelley and Barnett, in Hornet No 2160 led both the opening races, but were disqualified in the first for being over the line at the start and capsized in the second. Victory in race one went to the new Hornet of locals Tom Guy and Nic Barnes, with Strangler (John Williams) and Julie Hoyle third.

Jelley and Barnett finally got their act together to take the third race, then dominated Sunday s racing with three straight wins to take overall honours from Strangler and Hoyle and Guy and Barnes.

The Crouch Yacht Club were the only team able to give Haven Ports Yacht Club a run for their money in this year's Sail East team challenge.

They finished runners-up with 150 points, 19, points adrift of the champions total. Medway Yacht Club were third, some 360 behind Haven Ports and the next club,

Dabchicks Sailing Club, from, West Mersea, were over 400 points off the pace.Mike and Barbara Harrison, of the Crouch YC, in Jiminy Cricket, an Impala, won Class 4 ahead of clubmate Malcolm Hutchins, who was second, and Blue Movie (S Kaczor) of the Royal Burnham Yacht Club, who was fourth. The Harrisons also finished fouth overall.

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