JUMP START: GET READY FOR THE EASTER CHALLENGE

The Royal Ocean Racing Club’s UK domestic season fires up with the Easter Challenge, taking place on the Solent over the Bank Holiday weekend of 25-27th March. For many crews, the Easter Challenge marks a key opportunity to get up to speed again as quickly as possible and because of this has become a popular start of season training regatta. To help raise the standard of its racing, the Royal Ocean Racing Club provides coaching for free to participants in the Easter Challenge.

The RORC ropes in some of the world’s best to carry out this tuition. The coaching team will once again be led by Jim Saltonstall, MBE. Too modest to admit it, Saltonstall has played a pivotal role in the success of most of Britain’s leading Olympic sailors including Sir Ben Ainslie, Chris Draper, Iain Percy, Nick Rogers and the RORC’s own Principle Race Officer, Stuart Childerley. He will be supported by the RORC’s CEO Eddie Warden Owen, himself a former America’s Cup coach with Team New Zealand and latterly with the Spanish Desafio Espanol team in Valencia in 2007.

Once again integral to the coaching will be North U. Regatta Services, with specialists Chuck Allen and Andreas Josenhans flying across to the UK especially for the regatta. Both are well known sailors and highly experienced coaches and sailing performance analysts in the USA.

Based out of Rhode Island, Allen was a two-time college all-American champion and is one of North Sails’ one design specialists, currently part of their Class Sails Development team. Josenhans is accomplished enough to get his own Wikipedia page: A two-time Soling and one time Star World Champion (the latter with Buddy Melges), he was also crew on Bill Koch’s America’s Cup winner, America 3, and subsequently on Young America.

The team will be supplemented by other luminaries of the North Sails UK team.

“The RORC Easter Challenge is a great opportunity to tune up for the season. It’s the first time to line up with top competition, and refresh your knowledge of the complex Solent tides,” said North Sails regional Sales Manager, Sam Richmond. “Our North Sails team looks forward to working closely with sailors both on the water and at post-racing with interactive video debriefs.”