It could be worth it if you get on the 45, but i have heard mixed reviews about that squad too.  

The 109 campaign is successful but at the end of the day its a 109, not the most inspiring boat.  

You would learn a lot more going and sailing on different boats with different people for a year.  You would save yourself a lot of money, have more to put on your sailing CV than just a few mid to bottom fleet j80 results and be able to choose when you want to sail, not every weekend when they drag you over to cowes for a "team building exercise"! 

I don't rate the squad particularly, there are some good sailors there but I dont really see what they are trying to achieve.

I am definitely not blaming the squad for the boats not being perfect. I think it is impressive that the RYA have got probably £500k of boat on the water for the squad to sail, albeit largely with the help of Ran Racing.  What is happening on the water is promising and there are some good sailors in there.

My point still remains that the BKA isn't the only way to get into big boats and onto successful teams.  I chose not to go down that route and have been a part of a number of successful crews over the last few years.  

A few years back there was a BKA slogan which read "It's not who you know, it's what you know".  This is completely true about getting into the squad.  That's fine, but to get onto the teams you have to know the people, otherwise they wont know to offer you a spot! 

You just have to remember that there are other ways to get where you want to go! If the BKA is the one you want to choose then go for it, neither route is a bad choice! However, as I said before, I don't really see what the squad offers after you are no longer in it, there seems to be no real goal.  The dinghy squads have the olympics, what are the BKA aiming for?

A few comments as head coach of the BKA...

Firstly, I would absolutely agree that the BKA is not the only way to get into top level yacht and keelboat racing. It is, however, a proven way for a range of sailors, many of them from dinghy backgrounds, to quickly and effectively make the transition.

In terms of our own boats (Farr 45, J109 and J80s as you suggest): the J109 recently qualified for the Commodores Cup, the Farr 45 recently won it's class at the Vice Admirals Cup and two J80s are going to the J80 Worlds in Dartmouth next week. The J80s are aiming for mid fleet positions which, considering many of these sailors had no keelboat experience before last Sept is pretty impressive!

As you say, the reality of yacht racing is you have to know the right owners/teams so, as well as our own campaigns,  we work closely with a number of owners to get squad members onto other boats. We have several requests each week for good crew!

We also have very positive relationships with a range of professional sailing teams including Ran Racing, an RC44 team (where several sailors have been lucky enough to attend a regatta each as part of the shore team) and previously with Volvo Ocean Race and America's Cup teams. As well as opportunities to get into the professional side of the sport, these relationships also allow the squad members to get advice and coaching from some of the country's top professional sailors. 

You talk about destinations/goals... Around 25 of the past squad sailors are now working as professional sailors including on the World Match Racing Tour, America's Cup World Series, Volvo Ocean Race and TP52 circuit. A further seven are members of the Artemis Offshore Academy. Around 40 more are working in the industry (shore crew, sailmakers, etc), and many of these will, in time, become professional sailors. (note that, for all these, I am talking about the previous  RYA Keelboat Programme and UKSA Yacht Racing Academy schemes as well as the BKA, as the BKA has only been going two years).

My point is that compared to dinghies, where the only way to get selected for the olympics is to do the RYA squad system and qualify that way, the BKA doesn't really qualify you for anything by default.  It would be nice if there was an RYA team entered to the WMRT or something like that each year which was the target for all the members of the squad, something which you could only get to by going through the squad, if that makes sense?

I guess my situation was different to most of the squad where I have always been brought up in both dinghies and yachts so have always had the experience of both.  If I did not have any keelboat experience at all then it would probably be more appealing to me.