Oxford University Windsurf Club

Step 1: Get insurance

You have to have insurance that will cover you for any injury sustained while windsurfing. If you have medical insurance already, check if this will cover you (windsurfing is often counted as an extreme sport and so is exempt). If not, and you are under 25, the cheapest way to get it is to join the RYA (Royal Yaughting Association) and select Windsurfing as your primary activity.

Go to this site and choose your age, then choose either direct debit or card payment. On the “your details” screen, select windsurfing as your first interest, then continue to payment (£25 per year).

Once you have your RYA membership number you can continue on to….

Step 2: Join OUWC

The membership form is here , please print this out and fill it in, and if you wish to use the club kit at the reservoir, please also fill in the combination holder form.

We MUST have your emergency contact details and your insurance policy details before we can allow you to sail, so please fill these in! Hopefully we never have to use them, but if we do and they aren’t there, we all end up in deep shit. Also, since we provide food at some of our events, please include any allergies you might have.

Return the completed form, plus a cheque for the membership fee (£10 until AK only (2nd week MT), £20 for 1 term, or early memberships: £25 for Oxford students, £35 for Oxford university staff, and Brookes staff or students, and £45 for everyone else), to me, Michael Chester, at Lady Margaret Hall. I will them e-mail you once I’ve received it with the codes for the container etc.

(for those not at an Oxford College, either give it to me at a social/event, or post it to

Also, please read the safety guidelines on the resources page before you sail.

Step 3: Go windsurfing!

As soon as I have confirmed your membership, you can go out to Farmoor, just a couple of notes:

1. You MUST go with someone else! There has to be 2 people on the water for safety reasons.

2. Any beginners should be with an intermediate sailor, or at least a good improver (capable of going in control in any direction, and starting to use the harness/footstraps). IF YOU CANNOT CONFIDENTLY GO UPWIND, DO NOT SAIL IN OFFSHORE WINDS! It makes for a very long walk back if you stay on the board, and can leave you in trouble if you don’t.

3. You MUST wear either a buoyancy aid or a harness (and you should only be wearing a harness if you know/are learning how to use it)

4. You MUST wear one of our fetching purple vests (in the trailer), or Farmoor may remove you from the water. This means that outside special events, we can only have 5 people on at a time.

5. If you’re not sure how to rig kit, ask! And check each other’s kit before you go out. There is nothing worse than having your UJ come off when you’re right out in the middle….

6. If anything breaks, tell us! Unless you did something REALLY stupid, or entirely unrelated to windsurfing (pole vaulting with a mast, using the club wetsuits as slings to fire water balloons etc.), we won’t charge you, but we need to know when kit gets damaged. Also, if you have an accident or injury, tell us, since we need to report it to the sports fed Health and Safety (boo, hiss (only kidding, they’re lovely really)) people.

7. If there’s any kit you want us to get, that would fit a gap in our current club kit, then tell us, and we’ll take it into consideration (though whether we can get it depends on our budget).