Sailing Season Starts 4Th March 2012
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Issue 20 March 2012 Sailing Season Starts Diary dates • RYA Dinghy 4th March 2012 Show 3 & 4 March at The last race of 2011 on Boxing Day now seems a long time Alexandra ago. The Yahoo banter has been thick and fast during the off Palace, London season and it suggests withdrawal symptoms due to lack of • Sailing Starts sailing and regular contact with fellow members is taking it’s Sunday 4th toll. Sailing starts again on the 4th of March with the March Snowdrop series, the first race at 14:00hrs and the 2nd race • OOD Training, at 16:00hrs. The working parties have been working hard to 17th March @ 10:30 ensure that things are ship shape and we look forward to seeing a good turnout for the series. • Safety Boat Course 24 & 25th March • Parents Junior Club meeting 27th March • Casual Sailing Friday & Saturday Starts 6 & 7th April • Fitting Out Supper 14th April INSIDE THIS ISSUE Sailing Pages Activities 2 & 3 Away Day Page Survey 4 Working Page Parties 5 Club Page Development 6 Junior Sailing Page Club 7 Sailing Activities Racing Hopefully your boats are now race ready and many of you had new sails or boats for Christmas. The 2012 sailing programme is available on the club website, under racing and your OOD rota duties have been published via the Dutyman site, again links to this are on the website with a calendar summary on the home page. Racing will start on Sunday 4 th March with two races for the Snowdrop Series; first race at 14:00hrs. This series continues throughout March with Wednesday night series starting on 28 th March. An aim of the Sailing Committee this year is to further increase numbers on the water, by particularly encouraging Comet and Laser members to be more active with aim of introducing class racing for these in latter half of the year. I am also pleased that Malcolm Davidson has worked closely with the Comet Association to enable us to hold a Comet Open Meeting at Attenborough on 23 rd June – this will be a three race series open to Comet sailors from around the country. The current Sailing Instructions have been revamped for 2012 and latest version can be found under Racing on the website; please ensure you are familiar with them before racing. To make racing fairer we have introduced an about to finish (ATF) rule , such that two sound signals and flag S will be flown to indicate that the OOD will finish boats the next time they cross the finishing line. We are also making it clearer that OODs must identify boats over the line at the start and ensure they restart properly or are disqualified. Too often boats over the line are ignored and this gives a great advantage to boats not penalised. We have also clarified entry requirements for a race series. Race Development & Training In addition to the junior club, discussed else- where, we will continue to run a series of Comet/ Laser training sessions on Friday evenings throughout the season. There will also be events for other classes. At the first Comet/Laser eve- ning there will be an opportunity to discuss with one of sponsors, Hartley Boats, rigging require- ments to ensure your boats are set up correctly. There will be an OOD familiarisation session on Saturday 17 th of March at 10:30hrs and all those new to undertaking duties should try and attend as we talk through the roles and use of safety boats. I also hope to arrange a race man- agement evening in the Spring which will be led by an RYA coach. Casual/Social Sailing Casual or social sailing is a major part of the activities at Attenborough and many of our members prefer this to racing. As in previous years we will hold organised casual sailing on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons, starting on 6 th and 7 th of April respec- tively and running until mid- September. These are being organised by Dennis and Mark Bell, Steve Boon and Paul Johns. If you have any sug- gestions on further sailing activities that you would like to participate in, then please let a member of the sailing committee know. Mike Pritchard Away Days – Survey Results Many thanks to all those who gave their input to our recent Away Days survey. We wanted to know what you felt about away days, a weekend dinghy sailing at Plas Menia in North Wales and / or a few days sailing in yachts offshore. Your feedback was very useful, both from those in favour and those less in favour. One hundred and eight (108) members visited the survey and 25 managed to complete it. Sixty eight percent (17 members) indicated an interest in either or both of the events with a fairly even spilt between the two events. We now plan to go ahead with these two events on different weekends. The Plas Menai trip (15th – 17 th September) now needs to be booked and deposits paid. The trip is all inclusive of accommodation, meals, use of boats and instructors. The weekend will be tailored to our needs allowing both inexperienced sailors to gain extra skills and experience on a more open water than Attenborough with expert tuition, whilst the more experienced will be able to use high performance boats and catamarans. The cost of the weekend will be £195 and deposits of £50 are required to be paid to Saul Tendler with cheques made out to Attenborough Sailing Club by the end of March. Travel costs will be extra and arranged nearer the time. For more information please contact Saul directly on [email protected] or 07805299858. If you would like to contribute an article, photo or have an idea for inclusion in Telltales please contact Nick Turnbull-Ross [email protected] Thank You & Well Done From the Commodore Working Parties 2012 Thanks are due to all who have come along and helped out the working parties over the past two months. Without this volunteer work the club would be a very different place. An excellent job has been done to clear the brambles that have now been cut back along the Glover Cove shore all the way to the waters edge. We now need to make use of this free area and ensure that the brambles do not fight back as they have done in previous years. We may be calling for volunteers during the year to man guard and even carry out the odd counter attack should they mount and insurgence. The bramble clearance revealed the re- maining pontoons that we purchased a few years ago. Many good ideas have abounded regarding their use (even sell- ing them). One idea has been to con- struct of a “U” shaped dock in which to moor the committee boat. This will hopefully prevent the committee boat from slipping its moorings in future and ending up at the Visitor Centre as it did recently. There are even plans to build a roof for the dock to keep the weather and roosting birds off. The committee boat has again been hauled from the water and given an overhaul inside. A new floor has been put in along with an automatic bilge pump, a new anchor and chain. Additional power sockets have been added to the clubhouse along with the IT equipment providing us with a landline and telephone, PC and WiFi network. The web cam is well on its way. Club Development Plan The club development plan is being revamped to define how the committee along with the club membership can take the club forward. The committee have completed a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis and are using this together with the results from last year’s survey results to put the plan together. In the members section of the web site (username: asc; password: lagoon) a tab has been included to provide a copy of the SWOT and eventually the plan when issue 1 is complete. The plan will be a dynamic document and shall be reviewed at least four times a year to monitor progress and update. As part of the London Olympic legacy, Sport England have set up the Inspired Facilities fund, aimed at clubs who want to improve their facilities and attract more adult participation in sport. Grants of up to £50,000 are available and the club committee have agreed that we should apply for funding to improve the club facilities. The aim is to create a new clubhouse to house all changing facilities together with a larger social area with kitchen. The barge would be retained for training and smaller social events. This application will require us to have a good development plan with well defined actions and costing's /estimates and a small sub-group of Roger Day, Mike Pritchard and Saul Tendler, is working on this with support from the RYA. We have already approached Broxtowe Borough Council for agreement in principal for a building to be put in our compound. Taking any application for a grant forward will rely upon a positive outcome to this request. Junior Sailing Club Juniors and parents’ introductory meeting on Tuesday 27 th March at 7.30pm to discuss our plans for the new season Junior sailing is back with an exciting new programme of activities that builds on our successful launch last year! The Junior Club starts in April with a series of events on Saturdays that run through until September. The Junior Club is aimed at improving the sailing skills of juniors (8 to 17 years) holding the RYA Stage 2 certificate (or equivalent standard).