Racing advice

Garethaberdeenuni

18th April 2006 at 10:13 AM

Hi all,

Hoping you guys could give mea little bit of advice. Im the yachting rep for Aberdeen uni (and the Scottish University Sailing Association),and we have decided to look at getting serious about our yachting for nextyear.I have been lookingaround, and it seems that if we want to put together a decent racing summer for around the uk and ireland,the sonata may be the way forward. However, obviously we are lowly students, with little cash. So question 1, how cheap could we get a boat for? The plan is to finance the boat myself, then to use sponsorship to fund the entry feesetc, and potentially a decent set of sails, but it is unclear from the class rules if this would be allowed?Important here everyone realises that what we are trying to do is NOT to run a highly funded team, but purely to find a way of getting together enough money to be able to physically enter the events, and ideally be able to eat too(though this is optional obviously)! Would be REALLY grateful of any advice on how I might be able to get the project up and running, where I might be able to get an affordable boat (which may need some time spent on it to get it ready to race), and also f anyone has any ideas on what events would be good to do, as we want to be racing as much of the summer as possible?The only event we pobably really know we want to do is cowes week, as one of our 2 big uni event is on the solent, we need the practice down that way! we are basically a group of very enthusiastic uni sailors, with enough cash (just about) to buy a cheap boat, and a summer free which we want to spend doing some one design yachting!!

Sorry for rambling,and thank you very much for any help,

Gareth Martel

Aberdeen University Yachting Skipper