The J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race Model Boat Building Competition.
Following on from last year’s hugely successful J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race model boat building competition, a special training day (Wednesday 17th March 2010) was held at UKSA to re-launch the competition for 2010.
The competition (organised through the IW Young Chamber) gives Year 9/10 students attending an Isle of Wight High School the chance to put their boat designing skills to the test. With the help of their teachers, the students will need to form boat building teams and attend after school classes to design their own radio-controlled boat.
The students will be involved in every aspect of the build from making the initial drawings to cutting the panels, applying the polyurethane adhesive, installing battery-operated engines and finally but most importantly design their own customised team colours and artwork. Then on the eve (Friday 18th June 2010, 2pm) of the Round the Island Race the students’ work will be put to the test when a race will be held off the pontoon of the Island Sailing Club, the Round the Island Race organisers, with £150 worth of Henri Lloyd prizes up for grabs.
Kevin Wright, Cowes High School Design & Technology Technician said,
“It’s been a brilliant project to take part in as the students all got to work as a team, pooling their different skills and knowledge to try and build the best possible boat, it was also a lot of fun!”.
The competition was first run in 2009 for students from Cowes High School, this worked so well that this year J.P. Morgan Asset Management has furthered their commitment to the Isle of Wight local community by putting extra funding in place to enable all the Isle of Wight High Schools to enter a team in 2010.
Carrie Almond, the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce Education Business Partnership Manager stated,
“We would like to thank J.P. Morgan Asset Management who have again committed to funding the competition and expanding it to include all the High Schools on the Island, without this backing the competition wouldn’t happen”.
At the training day, students from Cowes High School completed a workshop for new teams from Carisbrooke High School and Christ the King College showcasing how they produced their boats last year, before racing them on the UKSA swimming pool.
Cowes High School student, Dominic Clements said,
“This boat project has been great fun both in the building and the racing I was impressed that we were able to build the boats so quickly and I learnt a lot about boats. It’s going to be great fun trying to improve the boats, most importantly we want to make them faster than last year and it makes it even more fun that we are going to have extra competition from the other High Schools”.
There’s still time for other High Schools on the Isle of Wight to enter, if you would like more details please contact dan.wilkinson@intotheblue.biz
Image: Into the blue. Left-right. Cowes High Students Daniel Higgins 15yrs old, David Caws 15yrs old, Kevin Wright Cowes High School Design & Technology Technician, Nick Wolfram 16yrs old, and Dom Clements 16 years old
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