Isle of Wight sailor, Arthur Farley, reports on his experience at the ILCA7 World Championships 2025 in Qingdao, China. Ed
It’s a world championship Personal Best for me at the ILCA senior worlds so I’ve got to take the small wins.
I am no longer in the lower age group category, but up against sailors with many years experience of sailing in a big fleet, against some of the world’s best sailors, most of the super star sailors featuring in the Americas cup, sailGP etc., and still occasionally appear in major ILCA events, making it one of the most competitive fleets.
Unfortunately this year has been a hard one for me with a lot of sickness, which has hindered my preparations.
But after a week of very light winds, strong tides and fog it looked pretty lively on Saturday enabling the race committee to set enough races to run a world championships, very tiring for us competitors but more my kind of wind too.
After four days we finally got the go ahead and in the end, on Saturday we had a good solid breeze gusting to 30 knots as the race committee effectively crammed a week’s sailing into a day, leaving us as competitors exhausted, but happy to have finally been able to test myself against the best in the world.
Reaching for the Olympics
I’m pleased I was able to experience this event with its highs and lows and am now even keener to pursue my goal of representing GB at the Olympics.
Focus now turns to the World Cup in Kiel, Germany and the Island games in the summer, followed by the Europeans.
Looking at the results sheet, I also beat the u21 world champion from last year.
Thanks to my sponsors Olesinski Yacht Design, Performance Sailcraft, Classic Boat Museum Goodall Roofing, British Sailing, Wightlink and individual fund raisers for enabling this step up in the game.
