Letter from your New Commodore
Dear Friends,
I think it is right that we should give a hearty thanks and congratulations to all of those who organised the AGM and the laying up supper on Sunday the 8th November.
I know that you were able to entice a substantial number of members who have not been along to a club event for some time and that clearly is encouraging in the hope that they had not forgotten about us and will come along to other future events. The feedback from the evening was such that I believe everybody enjoyed it and was able to swap old sea stories with each other and catch up on their latest experiences.
Of course, more than that was the fact that we now have me as your new Commodore. As I said that evening I am somewhat flattered that the Club has chosen to allow me to be Commodore and I will clearly try to build a broader Club based on the solid foundations that all of my predecessors have set before me
We want to expand into a wider range of activities. It has been pointed out that as we now are a Club of a fair number of members and that some people have a greater or lesser ability than others, we may even have a sailing event for the finest amongst us that they can truly pitch their skills against each other.
However, more important is the fact that we want to get young families on the water so that events can happen on school holidays as well as outside school holidays, and we might have contest between male and female crews, we might have more events on the water which are more varied than in the past.
Even more important than that is that we want to get all of the members to get to know each other.
With that last point in mind can I remind you all that we meet, as of course you are aware, on the first Wednesday of every month. It is not a big event, but it allows people the opportunity to meet the others in the Club whom they will not have met before. It allows people to think about joining other boats and may be even swapping crews around.
As I said above, the whole idea is to now spread our wings. We have a very mixed patronage and it would be somewhat narrow of us if we did not exploit all the different areas which we now go to. We will obviously, in the next couple of months, print and send out our annual calendar of events, but you must remember that over and above the calendar there is nothing to stop various members on their own getting together and going out on the water. For this purpose we have a crewing officer, Diana Bader-Clynes who most of you already know. If you telephone her and say that you have a spare weekend and is there anyone going out, she will do her best to match you up with someone who needs crew or if you are a skipper looking for crew.
I know that we are planning 2 or 3 training courses during the year and again these are items that you ought to contact us about so that we can explain fully all that is happening.
Please keep in touch via the Website, keep in touch with the newsletter and if you ever, at any stage, feel that you are being left out, then contact any Member of the Committee who will relay your worries to me and we will try and organise something that suits your needs.
Those of you who were at the dinner on the 8th will of course remember Gill’s witty rendition from her all female line up. That clearly indicates that there is no reason why we should not have a boat race where we have male and female crews pitting against each other. It could be for a day or it could be for several days or it may even be in the Mediterranean where the climate is warmer and the wine is more fulsome.
Whatever your boating ambition is, please stay in touch with the group so that we can find ways in which to get you on the water.
I look forward to sailing with you and meeting with you in the year to come.