One of the real plusses of an organisation like Boatshed is the breadth and depth of our Brokers’ knowledge and experience. We’ve crossed more starting and finishing lines on more boats than you can begin to imagine and on our listings you will find everything from racing dinghies and catamarans to Americas Cup yachts and single handed round the world Open 60s. We have raced round the cans, round the Fastnet rock and round the world. We love every aspect of boating, but some of us are properly infected with the racing bug!

Where we really score though is in the range of boats that you our customers enjoy racing. OK, we do deal with the esoteric end, but most of us have neither the time nor the money to commit to such projects. Rather, we go racing in boats which can also take the family cruising, offering a blend of comfort and performance more suitable to our needs.

The well known production builders generally have some quick boats in their ranges, whilst others specifically target the performance end of the market. Some boats are purchased new with racing in mind, and set up and kitted appropriately, others are simply raced out of the box. In between you find the whole gamut of race preparation and optimisation in tune with the skills and ambitions of the owners.

In our box of tricks we also have an in depth understanding of the IRC rule. This is the most widely used handicap rule in Europe and beyond, providing equitable racing to a huge variety of everyday yachts. The rule works really well, but it does help to understand it and to know what you can do to make sure your boat is not unnecessarily penalised by things which are easy to add, remove or alter. We can advise you on the competitiveness of individual boats and how any boat may be optimised. Don’t hesitate to ask.

Boatshed Hamble, Boatshed Cowes and Boatshed St Malo form a north, south axis of racing knowledge within the Boatshed group, though, of course, many of our other offices know their Code Zeros from their Asymmetric kites. If you want to race at your local Club, do some more serious IRC racing, join in JOG, RORC or other races, organise a Fastnet campaign, or have even more ambitious plans, we have some great boats to offer you of all sizes and prices. Browse our websites by all means, but we are more than happy to talk directly with you and help you achieve your racing goals.

The photos show just a few of our current listings. Try opening up “Advanced Search” on any of our office home pages. In the “Boat Category” box, scroll down to “Racing Yachts” and click “Search”. You will find plenty of J Boats, X Yachts, Dehlers, Bénéteau Firsts, Corbys and more. And those are only those we have specifically tagged as “Racing Yachts”. You will find lots of other excellent sailing yachts capable of performing well on the race course. Indeed you will often find us on the race course!

This weekend saw the X-Yachts Solent Cup at the Royal Southern Yacht Club at Hamble. Peter Delbridge of Boatshed Hamble was competing on the highly successful X-37 SX Girl belonging to "Noj White". See the photo's to get the idea of fun to be had on these type of boats.

Jon Roberts from Boatshed Cowes and Colin Sinclair & Marc Noel from Boatshed St Malo have full racing diaries too. Give us a call or drop in – we love talking about racing!
www.boatshedracingyachts.com

All pictures courtesy of Mike "Pike" Jones of Waterline Media.