New sportsboat and youth membership at Teign Corinthian Yacht Club

Teign Corinthian Yacht Club's 1720 Sportsboat is launched © Giles Bowerman

Teign Corinthian Yacht Club's 1720 Sportsboat is launched © Giles Bowerman

Teign Corinthian Yacht Club is very proud to make two inspiring announcements.

The launch of Scorpion, our Club's own 27' Sports Boat, which will be moored near Polly Steps, and, the creation of a new category of ;Youth Membership' with a membership of just £25 a year to all sailors age 18 to 30.

The club is making this bold move into yacht ownership to create a widely accessible Sports Sailing Yacht for training and encouraging the participation of competitive keelboat sailing for the members, both young and less young, of Teign Corinthian Yacht Club (TCYC) and the wider community.

With the help of the Club's sponsors including, TCYC Member Steve Phipps of Complete Estate Agents, who has endorsed this exciting endeavor by helping finance the project. We will create a training environment for participants to consider the move to both private boat ownership and also potential selection for the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) National Keelboat Squad.

We believe this is an extremely exciting time to be a member of Teign Corinthian Yacht Club. We have learnt that by making modern, thrilling, yet robust sailing dinghies available to our membership at our dinghy park, Coombe Cellars, we have seen a great increase in the participation of dinghy sailing there. This has been proven by six of our cadets having places in the South West RS Tera Dinghy Squad for 2014/15.

Because of this we have seen some really excellent results from the club's investment.

We are sure making this "Club Yacht" available to our membership we will enjoy similar success with larger Sports Boat Sailing.

Our goals are to encourage and entice non-sailors and sailors into a sport normally seen as elitist and inaccessible. By extending the upper age of our junior membership to 30 means that for just £25 a year anybody under the age of 30 will have access to the Premier Sailing Club in Teignbridge.

TCYC boasts not one but two clubhouses, one with the best sea views in Teignmouth that can cater for over 100 guests and one at Coombe Cellars which has direct access to one of the most picturesque and challenging sailing amphitheatres on the South Coast.

We have made this very assertive step to attract new younger members to the club. To help us provide the best training we can, we have sought out a commercial partner. This partner is, Tim Cox at Sea Sports South West, who will provide the most professional and skilled training for any crew willing to sign on to an RYA course. The Cork 1720, Scorpion, can take a crew of 5, with a Qualified Skipper.

With Tim Cox offering RYA Sail training courses during weekdays we are aggressively seeking to encourage young people from educational environments into this Olympian sport.

The boat was launched last Friday on a very wet afternoon and is expected to be fully operational in the very near future.