Hello, to all Sailors, Parents, Coaches and Volunteers,
The last 2 weekends have been busy for the dinghy group. We had another great turnout over that last couple of Saturday mornings with 24 young sailors taking part in our Saturday morning sailing programme. It is great to see all the kids having fun on and in the water and learning under the guidance of our coaches. I would like to say thank you to Brenton for stepping in as assistant coach and taking out all the more experienced children training. We are still looking for a second coach for Saturday mornings, and hopefully we will secure the services of a second coach soon.
On Saturday the 3rd, as predicted, the wind came in later in the day, with a forecast of 25kts. The senior group decided to abandon racing for the day after consideration of the forecast, and with the help of our RO (Race Officer – Graham Flintoff), we decided to head out to the estuary to do some starting practice. A good time was had by all, and some of the sailors had the opportunity to take the RS Aero out for a blast. RS Sailboats, have generously loaned the boat to us to trial for a few weeks. For those that are interested, the Aero is a Ultra Light weight (30kg hull is the same as an Oppie) single person dinghy, which is a modern take on the ever popular Laser. The Aero is one of the three new single handed boats that is under consideration by the Olympic committee, for use at the next Olympics. It is an exciting boat to sail and is very well engineered, with all those pesky nuances of the Laser engineered out (No more mainsheet hooked around the transom)! I can say that reaching off the breeze in a solid wind, it is more than exhilarating!
Saturday the 10th was another great day on the water with the wind and conditions excellent, sunny conditions and a solid breeze. We had a wonderful turnout with the juniors in the morning with lots of smiling faces at de-brief. Just a reminder to all the junior sailors, that you need to sign on at the morning briefing and sign off at the de-brief. The senior sailors had a great day on the water with 8 dinghies taking to the course in the afternoon with wind between 15 & 18 knots. I do believe that there were a few swimmers on the day with one dinghy dropping 3 in the drink at the same time! Our dinghy fleet have a new RO for the afternoon sailing so I would like to make mention and thank Graham for being a great RO for the start of the season, and welcome Gail Luff back to the dinghy section as RO. Lisa is back on board in the Hook Café, so If you are good on the BBQ, please see Lisa and see if she needs a hand on Saturday mornings.
Sunday the 4TH was our scheduled Try / Discover sailing day. In short, the day was a huge success, with all the volunteers putting in a huge effort to get the general public on the water and giving people a chance to enjoy the sport that we love. We decided to run this event similar to how we deliver the Try Sailing day at the Crab Fest, but set up at the other end of the Eastern foreshore on the beach adjacent to the town jetty. We took about 120 people sailing and will hopefully see some new junior sailors attending on Saturday mornings. We are also expecting that we will have enough adults to run and Introduction to sailing course for adults. If there are any Mum’s and Dad’s, or even anyone that you know that may want to take an adult sailing course, please let me know and contact Corinne at the front desk to register your expression of interest. Thanks to all the juniors that came down and conducted a dynamic display, sailing the Feva and putting on a colourful show for the public. I don’t normally thank individual people for the effort that they put in, but after seeing how may people put so much effort in for us to deliver the Discover Sailing day, I would like to publish all their names. Please let me know if I have missed someone;
Dinghy Seniors
Ally Boocock
Paul Luff
Brenton Edwards
Dani Carey
Elise Pinto
Linda Back
Jenna Casey
Jamie Wright & Bec Wright
Dean & Amanda Roughton
Mike Gaebler
Deb Collier
Amanda Harbron
Chris Ward
Deb & Barry Edwards
Annette Walker
Kim Wade
Dinghy Juniors
Van Casey
Jed Casey
Alex Dixon
Elizabeth Wright
Emma Wright
Jacob Roughton
Jai Roughton
Coaches
Bee Allison
Luke Abbott
Keelboat Sailors
Neil Dixon
Guy Moody
Jason Poutsma
Milton Dhue
Margie Allen
We have our Traveller Series on Saturday the 1st December, and will take place at Bunbury (KBSC). We would like as many juniors as possible to come down and put on a show for KBSC. A notice of race and registration will be coming out this coming week. I will discuss with you on Saturday.
Thank you again to everyone.
Kind Regards
Mike Gaebler
Rear Commodore Dinghy
0407195026