Last weekend, I ran a selection weekend for the newly-formed British Keelboat Academy. Twenty eight sailors - from over 100 applicants - were invited to UKSA and put through their paces in a range of areas. This included sailing in UKSA’s fleet of keelboats on Saturday, a night orienteering exercise on a wet and windy Saturday night and a number of team working exercises on Sunday. The last of these really allowed us to see the candidates in a completely different environment, operating as different members of a team. At the end of the weekend, twenty sailors were selected to join the BKA and all were given individual feedback on areas to work on to develop their sailing careers.

The first event for all the successful sailors will be this coming weekend, with a personal and team development session along with existing members of the BKA. Much of this will berun  by Ruari Chisholm of the company High Performance Development, who will provide much of the backgroud, while I will put this into practice in designing the programme for next season.

Members of the BKA will sail UKSA’s fleet of J80s as well as the TP52 ‘John Merricks II’.