The winter of muddy discontent seems like a distant memory and it was great to see that we had over 70 people on the water recently with club racing out at sea and Adur SC teaching and training in the harbour – a sure sign that the season is well under way and all is good with the world!
I’m pleased to report that the grass on our reinstated dinghy park got green enough for us to move boats back. A huge thank you to Paul and Richard for persevering with getting the chains successfully laid and those that helped out: Jeff, Rob Rattray, Rob Donaldson, Steve Roe, Al Cook, Ian Knight, Alex Jackson, Tim and Chris (Adur), Andrew and Leland Parry, Gareth and Rhys Griffiths.
The new dinghy park plan can be viewed online and we have started the process of issuing all current members with trolley tags which will now be your club identifiers and should be fixed clearly to your trollies. A boat audit is taking place and the appropriate action will be taken for abandonned boats or those with unpaid fees.
At the AGM we discussed our plans to buy a new committee boat. Whilst we sold Sentinel over the winter we still have Nab to run racing from, and have decided to put the purchase of a new boat on hold.
Our priorities are currently focussed on the club grounds. We are starting with improving security by replacing the southern fence and vehicle gate. We have also had success in gaining some land from the Port – the area to the west of the dinghy park and north of the slipway, up to 2 metres of the new sea wall. This area and the rest of the grounds will be fenced in, in due course.
You won’t have seen them but we a small team of slipway jetwashers – Jeff, Tim and Alan, but we could do with some assistance. We have set up a Whatsapp group to co-ordinate times to go and help so please contact me to be included.
A Whatsapp group has also been set up for those going on the water outside of race times. It would be good to create a better non-racing community so we hope the group will become active in co-ordinating timings for launching, sailing and recovery.
More onerously, a lot of our time and energy is taken up trying to resolve how to plug the gaps that we have in our duty roster. The committee have agreed that we have had to take the step of allocating duties to those that have not voluntarilly signed up. For further information read our previous message to members.
There are still a number of unresolved issues with the Environment Agency, which they are very much aware of, and we ask all members using the slipway to watch your footing towards the bottom of the ramp as some concrete panels are lifting, creating an uneven surface.
Some other brief updates;
- Wayfarer and National 12 open: A huge thank you to all the members that made this such a success.
- Improvers: Sessions are up and running and proving very popular.
- Club kit: New this year are club t-shirts and polo shirts which will be available soon.
- Charitable Incorporated Organisation: Progress is back on track after a delay due to dealing with the ground reinstatement.
Thanks everyone for your tolerance with the dinghy park over the winter, and its great to see so many people enjoying the club and lots of new faces. Feel free to get in touch with any questions or comments.
Sophie
ssccommodore@hotmail.com