A rowing club captain has been appointed president of the West of England Amateur Rowing Association.

Yorkie Lomas, club captain for the Dartmouth Amateur Rowing Club was nominated by the Dartmouth club for the role which administers rowing in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.

This was announced at the AGM of the West of England ARA last weekend at Dartmouth Amateur Rowing Club.

The coming year is an important one for the Dartmouth club as it will be celebrating its 150th anniversary after being found on March 22, 1869.

To mark the anniversary, Deal, Walmer and Kingsdown rowing club agreed to forego their right to stage the South Coast Rowing Championships which will now be held on the River Dart on Saturday, September 14.

Similarly, Castle Dore Rowing Club agreed to slip their opportunity to provide the president of the West of England ARA for 2019, to allow Dartmouth to take up the presidency.

Yorkie who is also a senior coach at Dartmouth, has again taken on the role of team leader for the West of British Rowing’s Inter-Regional Regatta.

He will be staging this year’s trials to select crews for the Junior Inter-Regional Regatta to be held at Nottingham.

Yorkie’s talent also extends to the water as a winner of the West of England ARA fours championships.

He was also a member of Dartmouth’s four man ocean rowing crew who in 2004 became the first four to row an ocean setting a benchmark record of 36 days to row across the Atlantic from San Sebastian de La Gomera to Port St Charles, Barbados, a record which stood for over a decade.

On top of this, Yorkie is also a committee member of the Port of Dartmouth Royal Regatta and its local rowing sub-committee chairman, a member of the Dart Community Boat Store group and a crew member of Dart RNLI.