An Old Waynflete, Ben Heaney (MCS 2001-06), has been selected to represent Great Britain in the Atlantic Challenge Competition, sailing replica C18th Bantry Bay gigs on Lake Huron in Canada in July 2010.

He was quite involved in the MCS sailing team and he owes his present skills to thorough training from Mr Emms and the hours of practice and competition sailing that he had with MCS. The GB team has just returned from a training regatta in Antrim sailing the Atlantic Challenge UK gig Integrité to victory - their first time sailing as members of the UK team. The gig Integrité, has been entrusted to Southampton University's Archaeology Department and is berthed at the historic Buckler's Hard.

Ben says "I am very proud to be representing Great Britain as a sailor in this championship that is aimed at building good relations between the young sailors of different nations through good-spirited but hard competition".  At the training regatta in Ireland he made links with teams from Russia, Canada, Finland, and the separate nations of the UK team.  This international cooperation is the main purpose of the competition - In some cases communicating with his shared love sailing rather than language abilities!

In Canada there will also be teams from France, Belgium and as far afield as Indonesia. It will enable him to discover and practice traditional maritime skills - this will be extremely useful to Ben in his MA academic work.

Ben is a student and trying to finance this himself. Each team member has to raise money towards the costs of equipment, traveling to and staying in Canada. Ben and his crew have to take their own gig too, of course. Should any OWs know of possible sponsors, or if you would like to help him yourself, he would be delighted in return to supply plenty of pictures and reports of their training and the competition itself.

Ben can be contacted via email: Ben Heaney  or by post:Ben Heaney, 1 Brinsmore House, Oddington, Kidlington, Oxon, OX5 2QZ

Click here to see letter from the organisers.