A competitive sailing and rowing club for those who already know port from starboard— and who want to be held to the finer parts of the craft.
We do not believe a regatta is a calendar entry. It is a question a crew puts to a stretch of water on a particular afternoon in May. The discipline is in the asking of it together — the same hands, the same silences, the same thin line through the committee boat.
Each fleet has its own master, its own training rhythm, and its own trophy cabinet. None of them operate in isolation from the others. The boathouse doors are shared. The kettle is shared.
Offshore-rated racing in a full crew of eight to twelve. Starboard watches run three-on, three-off for distances over one hundred nautical miles. Entry requires a completed ISAF Offshore Personal Survival course.
Single-handed and two-up hiking boats sailed close-in on the Solent and our inland lake from March through October. Wednesday night handicap fleet. Winter frostbite series runs every other Sunday.
Full sweep-rowing programme from learn-to-row through competitive HORR and Henley campaigns. A coxswain is placed with every eight; every cox is trained in three languages of command and emergency protocol.
Quiet-water disciplines for the technically committed. Morning sessions begin forty minutes before sunrise. Video-review ergometry in the boathouse loft after every fourth outing.
Radio is for the Coastguard. For racing signals, committee-boat orders, and the Blue Peter on Friday afternoon, the halyards run to the flag locker.
Hull inspected waterline to masthead. Standing rigging checked at every terminal. A new set of telltales stitched to the jib. Coffee arrives at 07:00 in enamel mugs from the boatyard office.
The skipper reads the weather routing aloud and announces watches. Seats are earned. Last season's navigator sits down again. The new bowman is given one evening to learn the spinnaker halyard by feel, in the dark.
Four dummy starts against the clock. The helm calls time to the layline. The tactician charts current across the tideline. Nobody speaks unless the wind shifts.
Charts laid out on the saloon table. Tide graphs against the mean. A cup of tea gets cold beside the barograph. The kind of quiet that does not come again until the boat is home.
Five-minute gun. Four. One. The fleet compresses toward the committee boat. A windward boat holds its lane. The tactician calls the layline at fifty-eight seconds. The rest is wind, weight and muscle memory.
Logged by hand in the book on the wardroom table, transcribed each November, audited by the Sailing Master and the Cox in Chief. We publish what we can prove.
Fastnet, Round-the-Island and two Channel crossings.
Measured across the keelboat fleet, six-knot breeze.
Including first overall in the Solent Points Series.
Plus 820 hours of ergometry in the boathouse.
A sixth-place finish at the Fastnet is, in our estimation, worth more than three firsts at a club regatta. The logbook agrees.
Four fleet masters. Every one of them is on an entry list this season. No retirees, no consultants — your coach is in the boat next to yours on Saturday.
Two Fastnets and a Sydney–Hobart. Reads current the way others read the tide tables.
Finn-class, two-time Nordic silver. Built the frostbite fleet from the keel up.
Henley Women's Eight stroke. Teaches command voice, steering and pace judgement.
Carries a sextant and a paper chart on every delivery. Says electronics are a second opinion.
01“My first night watch out of Cowes I learned two things: I had never actually been cold, and I had never actually been trusted. Genevieve handed me the helm at three in the morning and walked below. Both of those facts still matter to me.”
— Hadley Forsythe — keelboat crew, member since 2019
02“The cox counts the strokes, but the boat keeps the time. You stop hearing either one after the first thousand metres and that is when the eight becomes a single rowing thing. I did not think my body was capable of that.”
— Oskar Mendenhall — men's eight, bow seat
03“They do not pretend the wind is a metaphor. The wind is information. You either read it or you lose by a minute and a half. I have grown to love that the sea is not kind to me on purpose.”
— Cressida Pellew-Hart — dinghy squad, three-season member
Membership is by interview rather than application. A prospective member sails or rows with a coach for one afternoon. The coach's notes go to the board and a decision is made within a fortnight. We cap membership at four hundred seats across all disciplines and there is a waiting list for keelboat and dinghy.
Prospective members are paired with a coach for a single session. There is no application form on this page and there will not be one in the post. A short note is all that is required.