The Official Charity for the 2020 edition of Cowes Week will be Greig City Academy’s, Scaramouche Sailing Trust. This six year old school sailing club, which became a charity last year, is an amazing initiative which gets young people from North London into the sport.
Kate Johnson, Commercial & Marketing Director at Cowes Week Ltd explained: “At Cowes Week we have a range of sponsors and commercial partners who support the regatta and help make it all happen. These partners share our thoughts that as an event we ought to give something back, and having an Official Charity allows us to highlight a group or a cause that we feel is deserving of attention and funding. Between now and the event we’ll be sharing a number of ways that you can support this great charity.”
Laurence Mead, Regatta Director at Cowes Week commented “Since I first met this group a couple of years ago I’ve seen Jon Holt and his team take complete non-sailors from a North London school and help them become amazing young people, who are at ease with the world and who, just for good measure, are becoming really great sailors. I’ve sailed top level Etchells events with them and they have just the right balance of competitiveness and sportsmanship. They all give everything to their day on the water. I’ve sailed with sailors as young as 13 from Greig City Academy and on one occasion Ben Ainslie was in another competing boat. We were battling away with a five-time Olympic medallist and the young person in the middle was 13! He had a great attitude and hiked like he was in the America’s Cup himself. He wasn’t fazed by five Olympic medals!
Jon Holt on behalf of Greig City Academy says: “It’s wonderful for our charity to have the support of Cowes Week but it’s also a great opportunity for all of our sailors to meet thousands of other passionate enthusiasts for this great sport. The sailing community have taken us into their hearts and we really appreciate the support we receive and we look forward to making many new friends during Cowes Week 2020. Our sailors will be on hand racing a variety of boats and will be giving talks throughout the week about the Academy, our adventures and what it means to them as individuals.”
Greig City Academy in North London runs a variety of sailing programmes and has twice entered the 45 foot Scaramouche in the RORC Rolex Fastnet Race. Crewed almost exclusively by young sailors who would otherwise have had very little chance of getting into the sport, Scaramouche has both times successfully sailed the 650 mile course, giving those on board the experience of a lifetime.
Other squad members compete very successfully in Solent Etchells racing, in Squibs and an Intro 22, boats which have all been picked up for virtually no money and renovated by the students themselves. Every week on a reservoir in North London 30 or so pupils sail in various dinghies and all are learning about self-reliance and how to handle responsibility – great life lessons learned directly from sailing.
More information at https://gcasailing.com/ Charity Number: 1183400
Cowes Week entries opened on Monday 16 December. Don’t miss out on the Super Early Bird offer available until 17 January 2020!