100% women

Inaugural Women’s Open Keelboat Championship to take place this June from Royal Southern YC

The UK's inaugural Women’s Open Keelboat Championship is to be hosted on 7-8 June this year by the Royal Southern Yacht Club, Hamble. The new event aims to attract female sailors to a weekend of high quality racing on the Solent in a range of keelboats.

Developed by four female racing sailors from the Solent, Jody Slater, Emma Beagley, Stephanie Danby and Vicky Lincoln, will be 100% for women. The men will be on the committee boat, driving RIBS and in the bar for the party in the evening!

Jody Slater explained: “We’re going to deliver top quality racing in one of the world’s most famous sailing venues, accommodating a range of experience and age groups across key one design and handicap fleets. The aim is to provide a format which is not currently available on the Solent racing calendar. The four of us raced together last summer in an all-female team and had such a good laugh at the same time as really challenging ourselves. Racing in an all-girl team gives opportunities for women to take up all the crew roles. We figured others would be keen to join in too. We're just regular girls wanting to provide a really good weekend of competitive racing.”

Slater continued: “We will ensure that the shore side party is equally memorable - we're calling it an evening of ‘frocks and flipflops’ which sums up our attitude fairly well. We’ve been so pleased at the keen interest and support people are already showing and are really thriving on turning this idea into reality.”

Entry has now opened via the Royal Southern's website, where the Notice of Race is available and the organisers will be providing guidance to potential entrants on finding boats, crew, mooring and accommodation at www.wokc.co.uk. There are no advertising restrictions and any level female sailor can enter.

The format for the weekend will be multiple races with a party on the Saturday evening for men and non-sailors as well as entrants.

Emma Beagley commented: “we are so pleased to reach this formal stage of making the announcement that entry is now open. All those women who have contacted us to register their interest are now able to take positive action and enter their boats. This will mean that we can firm up the classes that will provide the best possible racing. All sports boats are welcome. For IRC, we want to keep eligibility as wide as possible but with a guide rating of between 0.900 and 1.090. Also, we will certainly consider a separate class start for any design with six or more entries. We know some women sailors already compete in their own club’s annual female helm events and we encourage them to spread the word about this new championship.

Emma continued, “ www.wokc.co.uk is developing all the time in line with the feedback we get. Over the next few weeks there will be further new pages including assistance on how to take things from here if you are new to this type of event. There is already a crew and boat pool and soon there will be information on how to find accommodation, directions, mooring, lift-ins, the social side, and so on. We’ve discovered from our website that there are lots of talented girls keen to compete. Some are already teamed up and want to find a boat to borrow or to charter. We are providing whatever help we can to move this along.”

Check out the women's sailing section of thedailysail here