Extra-Oar-Dinary effort by Quilter Cheviot

Wednesday 17 June 2015

Investment management firm Quilter Cheviot will sponsor Jersey Rowing Club’s new ladies quad team.

The team, which was founded last year by complete novices, has now renamed itself the Quilter Cheviot Blues. The sponsorship will help to fund hiring and branding a high-quality boat, buying kit and paying for coaching and race entries. It will also help the crew stay safe by paying for a guard boat for when they are out on the open water during key races.

The four women who make up the crew had never rowed at all before they met at a Jersey Rowing Club Open Day. Inspired, they decided to found the inaugural all-female novice team. Since then, they have entered two infamous local rowing races: the Sark to Jersey (28 kilometres) and Gorey to Carteret in France (30 kilometres). Both races were completed within seven days of each other, raising £2,500 for the Oscar Maclean Foundation, which supports children living with cancer. 

The team has recently come second in both the Royal Channel Island’s Yacht Club Race, one of the oldest fixtures in Jersey Rowing Club’s calendar, and in the Sark to Jersey race held on the 13^th June (Ladies Quad Class). At the second event, the team was also presented with the Snip Guille Ladies Trophy.

The crew’s next racing event will be an international rowing fixture from Jersey to France on the 25^th July.

Jenna McCabe, Regional Development Manager at Quilter Cheviot said: “We’re really keen to support sporting and cultural life on the island and we are really impressed by the pluckiness of this team. We’re delighted to be able to support them, and hope that their success helps to attract more women into the sport.”

Nathalie Le Barz, of the Quilter Cheviot Blues, added: “This sponsorship from Quilter Cheviot has quite literally helped to get us off the ground. Our training regime is pretty gruelling, but knowing that we’re working with great support behind us really helps to keep us going during those 5.45am sessions. We were all complete novices when we started our team, but now we’re addicted – we really hope that seeing what our team has achieved in such a short time frame encourages more people on the island to take up this fantastic hobby.”