the royal yacht squadron isle of wight foundation

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Applications

Download grant application form

Who can apply?

We only make grants to individual young people aged between 15 and 29 with a strong connection to the Isle of Wight; you will probably have been brought up and educated on the Island.  The Grants panel will look at the strength of the connection in considering any application.

We aim to provide financial help for those young people whose circumstances would otherwise not allow them to take up an opportunity in the maritime sector

What applications will qualify?

The grants panel will consider any application for financial assistance for you to take up an opportunity that will improve your ability to get a job/follow a career that has a maritime connection.

The Grants Panel might support:

·       a course

·       training

·       living or travel expenses while taking up an unpaid internship

·       apprenticeship

·       work experience

·       equipment

The Grants Panel will consider any application for support of your own project as long as it is within the objectives of the charity.

What applications will not qualify?

The RYS Foundation will not for example pay for:

·       items that are covered by the Student Loans Scheme

·       costs covered by your employer

·       items covered by any Government back to work schemes

How to apply?

We require each applicant to complete an application form which can be accessed here. If you would like to discuss your application or would like help in completing the form please email us at  [email protected] . The completed form should be sent to: [email protected] or by post to;

 RYS IOW Foundation, The Royal Yacht Squadron, The Parade, Cowes, Isle of Wight PO31 7QT.

The application process

We will acknowledge receipt of your application and ask you for any further information that we require. Applications should be submitted at least 10 working days before each Grant Panel meeting, after which a shortlist will be drawn up for interview at the meeting. Once the interviews have taken place the Panel will select the applicants they wish to sponsor based on the extent to which they meet the RYS Foundation's criteria, aiming to sponsor as broad a spread of maritime careers as possible. We will not be able to support all eligible applications or all those interviewed so try and tell the Grants Panel why they should support you in particular.

Forthcoming Panel meetings will take place on:

Monday 29th January 2024 Monday 25th March 2024 Monday 20th May 2024 Monday 22nd July 2024 Monday 23rd September 2024 Monday 25th November 2024

You will be informed either by email or letter whether your application has been successful.

It may be possible for applications to be considered at short notice in exceptional circumstances. 

Financial Contribution

We usually expect applicants to make a financial contribution to their proposed training themselves, depending on the resources they have available to them. We will not usually fund courses with a start date less than three months ahead of application- this is so that we can be sure that sufficient planning, saving up and gaining relevant experience has been done.

Client personal data.

CPD will be handled by the RYSF in accordance with statutory requirements and codes of practice issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

To assess the Client’s case, in accordance with the aims of the RYSF, members of the RYSF Grant Panel will collect CPD through Client application forms and interviews. To endorse the Grant Panel’s recommendations, sufficient CPD will be shared with other RYSF Trustees. To further the interests of the Client, sufficient CPD may be shared outside the RYSF, for example with partner charities, travel companies, potential employers and/or training providers. To market RYSF activities limited CPD may be made public for example in banners, press statements, videos and newsletters. All CPD collected by RYSF will be stored and processed in password protected and/or locked environments and will be destroyed securely when no longer required.

With the exception of health information relevant to the assessment of the grant application, the RYSF will not collect or record any sensitive personal data, for example: details of ethnic origin, genetic/biometric identifiers, religious, philosophical or political views, trade union membership, sexual orientation and criminal convictions.

Clients may:

Review their personal data.

Be shown how their personal data is processed.

Limit how their personal data is shared

Change any incorrect personal data.

Have their personal data deleted.

Clients should address any data enquiries initially to the RYSF Trustee/Volunteer who handled their case or contact the RYSF through its website: http://www.rysfoundation.org.uk

GDPR breaches will be reported to Secretary of the Royal Yacht Squadron within 24 hours.

A copy of this document will be made available to all RYSF Clients, Trustees and Volunteers. It will be reviewed annually by the RYSF

Yachting World

• Digital Edition

Inside the Royal Yacht Squadron – we get a rare view of this most exclusive club

• Belinda Bird
• May 18, 2015

Sarah Norbury jumps at a rare chance to see inside the Royal Yacht Squadron, that unique and intriguing yacht club at the centre of Cowes, in its 200th anniversary year

Photo: Paul Wyeth

The Royal Yacht Squadron’s Castle clubhouse is best known to most sailors as the centre of the action at Cowes Week. Puffs of smoke in the aftermath of the bangs waft across the water towards the fleets of yachts, their crews’ faces pinched with concentration as they plan their beat up the rocky Island shore.

No first-timer to Cowes Week can fail to be awestruck by the Castle. Competitors mill around before their starts, staring at the flags and course-boards, getting a sight down the startline straight into the windows.

Looking is as near as most sailors ever get to this most aristocratic of clubs. Members will repair to the Squadron after racing, taking tea on the lawn, before entering the Castle for cocktails before a party or the fabulous Squadron Ball, but for the rest, the Castle itself, built by Henry VIII to repel the French, is a visual symbol of the club’s exclusivity.

The Platform, from where Cowes Week starts are signalled. Photo: YPS/Boat Exclusive

The most prestigious club in Britain, possibly the world, is wreathed in mystique. The only way to join this club of Kings, Lords, Hons and Sirs is to be invited by a member and be subject to a secret ballot. The fact that the membership list reads like Debretts is an indication of most sailors’ chances of being invited.

It’s said that wealthy tea merchant Sir Thomas Lipton was blackballed for being ‘in trade’, which is why his 1898 bid for the America’s Cup was sponsored by the Royal Ulster YC. He was allowed in eventually, but died just two years later so scarcely had time to enjoy the Castle’s delights.

Some accept a blackballing with grace, others kick up a stink, like the owner of a 150-ton schooner who, the story goes, sent a message to the club that he was anchored within close range and would commence shelling unless he received a personal apology from Percy Shelley, son of the famous poet, who had blackballed him.

Flying the white ensign

The appeal of being a member is obvious. Who wouldn’t want to fly the white ensign from their stern? The Squadron is the only yacht club with a Royal Navy warrant to do so, granted in 1829. And who wouldn’t want to walk boldly in to meet and drink with the great and the good?

I asked the current commodore, the Hon Christopher Sharples why, when a number of royal clubs are struggling to find new members, the Squadron has a healthy waiting list. “It’s a very fine club,” he responded. “People enjoy the standards and the tremendous history. Members treat the Castle as a much-loved country home.”

RYS commodore, the Hon Christopher Sharples

Originally named The Yacht Club, it was founded on 1 June 1815 by a group of 42 gentleman yachting enthusiasts. Five years later, member King George IV conferred the Royal in the club’s title and in 1833 King William IV renamed the club the Royal Yacht Squadron. Members met in the Thatched House Tavern in St James’s, London, and in Cowes twice a year for dinner.

Today there are 535 members and dinner is served in the magnificent Members’ Dining Room, under the painted gaze of illustrious past admirals and commodores. The room is adorned with silver trophies and scenes of the high seas, and waiters bring course after course from the kitchens and wine cellars below. There are bedrooms for overnight stays, a room for members to keep their ‘mess kit’ or black tie, which is required dress on Saturday nights, and even gun lockers for shooting parties.

But sailing is the club’s raision d’être and neither a title nor a fortune are a guarantee of entry. The club professes that “any gentleman or lady actively interested in yachting” is eligible for nomination.

The Library, a peaceful sanctuary as well as an important archive. Photo: YPS/Boat Exclusive

The Squadron was where yacht racing was born. In the early 1800s the aristocracy came to Cowes to socialise and cruise in their boats. The first races were duels between the yachts of the day, then rules for fleet racing were drawn up. The first club regatta, later to become Cowes Week, was in 1826. For more than a century the reigning monarch would be there to present the King’s or Queen’s trophy.

Some of history’s greatest yachtsmen are on the Squadron’s membership roll: Sir Thomas Sopwith, John Illingworth, Sir Francis Chichester, Sir Alec Rose, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. Ties with the Navy are strong and some of British maritime history’s most famous names have been Squadron members, not least Nelson’s vice-admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy who commanded HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, Admiral Lord Cochrane who was the inspriation for C.S. Forester’s Hornblower novels and Admiral Sir Jeremy Black, captain of the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible during the Falklands War.

The public’s more usual view

Perhaps the club is still best known around the world for hosting the race around the Isle of Wight in 1851 won by the schooner America , which took home what became known as the America’s Cup. The Squadron donated the Cup itself in 1851 and mounted a number of challenges to win it back.

More than 160 years later the America’s Cup has still never been won by a British challenger, but now the commodore believes the Royal Yacht Squadron has “the best chance we have ever had” with its sponsorship of Ben Ainslie Racing as official British challenger for the 2017 Cup.

• 1. Flying the white ensign
• 2. Bicentenary celebrations
• 3. Inside the Castle