John Ready

My cat sailing began at 20, when I was searching for a quicker boat than my old cherub to sail solo during university vacations. So a Hobie14 catamaran did the trick aided by a student overdraft from the NatWest! It was no Tornado but a lovely introduction to cat sailing, with frequent capsizes as I got to grips with it!

Throughout my student days I hitched home from University to sail on ‘Sorcery’ a lovely 40 footer, on which we were East Anglian champions a couple of times. One day whilst racing on the Blackwater an old style Tornado sport blew past us competing in the 3 piers race. I’d been sailing with Ron Wigley and Paul Harrison (both ex-Admirals cup sailors) for a few seasons and had learned an awful lot. Seeing this Tornado fly by made me want to go racing on my own, to see if I really had learned as much as I thought. The idea of sailing double handed instead of with Sorcerys full complement of 10 and at 3 times the pace really appealed.

So I tried it and I never looked back…

Graduating in 1992 from Bradford University with an Electrical Engineering degree seemed like a good start. After all, you have to be able to afford to race consistently in order to stand a chance of improving! After a few career false starts it rapidly became clear that there certainly aren’t many careers which afford racing this way. So in short order I was working for Morgan Stanley, then CitiGroup as a Hedgefund technology specialist working in New York and London. The pay was good, but the hours certainly got in the way of racing, although I did push the boundaries! So at the end of 2002 I left the blue bloods with the beginnings of my own business, which I hoped would solve both dilemmas of finance and freetime.

5 years later, I just about manage to buy lunch without needing a credit card! But Tornado racing at this level is expensive and juggling family, training and business demands frequently stretch me beyond my limits, for the dream of racing in the 2012 London Games. Thank fully I have supportive family and a very understanding partner.

I intend to earn that Olympic privilege and I hope that you will be interested enough to keep tabs via my website and maybe become a supporter too!

All the best.