Making the grade

Newly launched Yacht Racing Academy yachts are selected for British Rolex Commodores' Cup team

The new Yacht Racing Academy, launched less than one month ago at the UK Sailing Academy in Cowes is celebrating after learning that both of the Academy’s yachts Bear of Britain and Chernikeeff 2 have been selected to represent Great Britain in the 2006 Rolex Commodores’ Cup.

The Yacht Racing Academy selection trials finished at the end of April 2006 and since then selected crew members have been competing on the two Academy racing yachts every weekend in the Rolex Commodores’ Cup selection trials.

The Rolex Commodores’ Cup trials were a huge success for the new Yacht Racing Academy as at the end of the first two weekends Bear of Britain was lying in first place and Chernikeeff 2 second overall in Class 1. The success continued this weekend with an outstanding victory by over two hours in the final classification by Bear of Britain in the offshore race to Cherbourg.

Kit Hobday, Founder Yacht Racing Academy, said today: “It’s a great cause of satisfaction for me to see two yachts that have both been heavily crewed with graduates from the Yacht Racing Academy in the Great British Team for the Commodores’ Cup.”

This is a huge achievement as only five weeks ago most of the young adults crewing on the two Academy racing boats had only ever sailed dinghies or on smaller yachts, now they will be representing Great Britain in the 2006 Rolex Commodores’ Cup, sailing two Farr 52s which are the biggest and fastest boats entered into the event.

This success is down to the hard work and high level of training that the Academy candidates received whilst on the Yacht Racing Academy selection training at the UKSA. The Rolex Commodores’ Cup is the highlight of the 2006 yacht racing calendar. Both crews are in an unrivalled position which enables them to train and improve their racing skills onboard two evenly matched high performance yachts. In preparation for the Cup, both boats will regularly be seen match racing against one another in the Solent

The Yacht Racing Academy would sincerely like to thank its President Peter Harrison and its Founder Kit Hobday for their continuing support, guidance and expertise in helping cultivate Britain’s top yachtsmen of tomorrow.

Ben Willows the Yacht Racing Academy’s project manager said, “I’m overjoyed with the early success of the crews onboard the yachts. Their success is a credit to the United Kingdom Sailing Academy, Peter Harrison and Kit Hobday and I could not have hoped for a better start for the Yacht Racing Academy.”

Ben is now continuing to search for sponsorship for the Yacht Racing Academy to ensure it goes from strength to strength.