The Women's Open Keelboat Championship 2008 has opened entry today.
The organisers will be providing guidance to potential entrants on finding boats, crew, mooring and accommodation at www.wokc.co.uk.
This brand new event is taking place on 7/8 June 2008 and aims to attract female racing sailors to a weekend of high quality racing from the Royal Southern Yacht Club, Hamble, across a range of keelboats. There are no advertising restrictions and any level female sailor can enter.

Since the website www.wokc.co.uk was launched last December, the organisers have received valuable feedback from many women sailors. Working closely with experienced race officers at the Royal Southern Yacht Club, they are tailoring the event to incorporate as many requests as possible. The format for the weekend will be multiple races with a party on the Saturday evening for men and non-sailors as well as entrants.

One of the event organisers Emma Beagley said, "we are so pleased to reach this formal stage of making the announcement that entry is now open. All those women who have contacted us to register their interest are now able to take positive action and enter their boats.
This will mean that we can firm up the classes that will provide the best possible racing. All sports boats are welcome. For IRC, we want to keep eligibility as wide as possible but with a guide rating of between 0.900 and 1.090.
Also, we will certainly consider a separate class start for any design with six or more entries.
We know some women sailors already compete in their own club's annual female helm events and we encourage them to spread the word about this new championship.

Emma continued, www.wokc.co.uk  is developing all the time in line with the feedback we get. Over the next few weeks there will be further new pages including assistance on how to take things from here if you are new to this type of event. There is already a crew and boat pool and soon there will be information on how to find accommodation, directions, mooring, lift-ins, the social side, and so on.
We've discovered from our website that there are lots of talented girls keen to compete. Some are already teamed up and want to find a boat to borrow or to charter. We are providing whatever help we can to move this along."

The Women's Open Keelboat Championship provides an opportunity which is not currently available on the Solent racing calendar. Now that entry is open it's time to make this a competitive event to remember!