News - 2012

13:47 Saturday 18 Aug 2012 Sue Pelling/CWLEssex team win the Aberdeen Asset Management Under 25 Trophy

The well-sailed winning J/80 team. This team of dinghy sailors from Blackwater Sailing Club will be ones to watch in the future.

William Goldsmith (19) and his young team from Maldon, Essex aboard the J/80 Exess, are the winners of the inaugural Aberdeen Asset Management Under 25 trophy.

This new trophy aimed at encouraging young teams to take part proved highly successful with 11 teams of under 25 year old sailors taking part.

Goldsmith, who is a member of the British Keelboat Academy, last sailed at the regatta two years ago but was keen to put together a more serious campaign this year. “I was just contemplating how we were going to fund a Cowes Week campaign when I looked on the website and noticed the launch of the Under 25 Trophy. I signed up straight away because they were giving free entry for the first 10 boats. We are really thankful to Aberdeen Asset Management, and our own sponsors for making the whole thing possible. It really helped us out a lot.”

Commenting on the team’s win and the week’s racing, Goldsmith said: “It has been a fantastic week and to win this trophy is unbelievable. It makes all our hard work to get here, really worthwhile and the fact we did all the organisation ourselves makes it feel even more rewarding.”

Goldsmith said the team had a bit of a stressful time on the racecourse yesterday just when the results were starting to become crucial: “We had a downwind start and half a second before the gun we realised we were on the line, so we made the call to drop spinnaker and return to the start because we couldn’t risk getting an OCS. We started really late but thankfully managed to sail into third, which kept us in contention. However, later that day we happened to meet the line officer and the first thing he said was: ‘good start you were spot on, you weren’t over at all’. We couldn’t believe it but still we felt we made the right call because we would have always had that doubt.”