The Start of the Sailing Season is Finally Here

There can be no denying, even with the just plain weird weather that’s part of the global warming deal, that when sailing starts, winter is dead and buried. Sailing is making its presence felt at winter’s funeral next weekend with the first race of the season on Easter Saturday afternoon. See Race Schedule for details.There’s been a bit of a build up to racing this year. For a start, Nik, myself and a handful of hardy others (Ben, Rebe and James) tested the water to make sure it was still there a couple of weeks ago when the sun was out, the breeze was friendly and Mike Hellier was available to man a safety boat. For a while there we thought we were going to have to pick Mike up from France but he persuaded the RIB off its straight line course and back onto shore where he and Ken discussed steering finesse then hit it with a hammer until it went round corners.

The real heroes, though, were all those that gave up their mornings at our two pre-season working parties. Powered by bacon butties from Denise and Alex in the kitchen and a lot of shouting by Nik, we’ve had a clearout of the clubhouse and cleaned and reorganised the boat parks. Ian has built a row of racks for the lasers, Ken fixed the big safety boat by scratching his head at it for a day or two and Mike ‘would you buy a used boat from this man’ Hellier oversaw the sale of the Tasars. Jackie showed two very inexperienced Vice Commodores the error of some of their ways and we had a lot of help from, well, everyone else with shifting rubbish out of the way and generally making the place look spick and span.

We’ve also this year decided to try some afternoon racing. So many times did we turn up to no wind on the Sunday morning, only to see it pick up in afternoon as the sea breezes kicked in so during the months of June, July and August we’ll be sailing on Saturday afternoons instead of the usual Sunday mornings. If it works out we’ll continue the practice next year.

We’ve kicked off the season with a Saturday race this year because the Sunday is Easter Sunday and Easter Sunday is for hunting Easter Eggs and fluffy bunnies. So that’s Saturday 3rd April, briefing at 2:00pm, first start at 2:45pm. Let’s see if we can make this a record turnout.