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7 May
Wayfarer and Dinghy Cruising News
Open Day
As you probably know it is the club open day this Saturday (10th May). The idea is that participants who have expressed an interest in sailing will arrive about 1pm so that they can have a briefing, a tour of the club and get involved in rigging the boats. I am away this weekend unfortunately, but we really need to have as much representation from the fleet as possible. Ideally we will have a Wayfarer on the lawn for people to look at and also some out on the water if people come along who are interested in going out for a test sail. It is obviously a good opportunity for us as a fleet to sell the Wayfarer / cruising dinghy section if people come along who are interested in that. If people would be willing to help out could you let me know? You would need to be down at the club about noon on Saturday in order to get set up before people arrive.
Upcoming Events
The next cruising event in the program is 24th May (which is actually a Saturday). Although we are generally looking at cruising on Sundays I have agreed that we will still run this event on the Saturday as a joint training session with the cats. There will be tractor and safety boat cover available and also an opportunity for anyone who needs to do so to ride in with of the rescue RIBS and get some training for rescue boat duties. We also hope that there may be some new faces from the open day who will find this event useful. It will be a really good opportunity to practice some cruising skills (anchoring, heaving to, reefing afloat, capsize recovery!?) whilst having the safety boats in attendance and it would be good if we could get as many boats along as possible to take advantage of it. I will definitely be out as I am keen to see if my boat actually floats following a capsize! We will aim to begin the session with an "off the beach" time of 1pm, which means leaving the dinghy park at 12:45. However, there will be a short safety briefing for new crews / helms before then so best to arrive a bit early to allow time to get rigged and changed. If people have the appetite for two days of sailing then we could also stage a cruise on the Sunday (although it is not a huge tide) - please let me know if you are interested. I am on safety boat duties that day so will be otherwise engaged. There is also racing this Sunday and next and as usual the Wayfarers are more than welcome (and encouraged) to participate.
Sunday Cruising
I will be working through the program to try and ascertain which cruising events are to be moved to Sundays and will then circulate an email and get this updated on the website. We actually have very little formal cruising in the program through the June / July regatta season so I don't anticipate that many changes will be needed until later in the year. As was the case last season there should be the scope for some informal cruises through June and July - it should be possible to tell from the program which tides will be suitable.
Safety Boat
As discussed with a few of you an issue with the change to Sunday cruising is that members of the fleet may find that they have rescue boat duty on days which are now scheduled for cruises and where a decent tide is expected (which are few and far between this year). I raised this at sailing committee last night and the view was that if anyone finds themselves in this position as a result of the change it should be possible to swap with other club members to avoid missing out on the cruise - if anyone needs to do this they should contact Jon Oliver (copied in on this email).
Cruiser Racing
I was speaking to Roger and Greg last night and they mentioned that Wayfarers would be welcome to join in the "small cruiser" racing if we wished (dates are in the program) for some variety. This has the advantage that the PY ratings are much closer to the Wayfarers than some of the swifter monos which should lead to some close racing. They have some new crews this season so are happy if less experienced racers would like to join in to gain some experience. There are some dates (one a month I think) where they race with the other fleets, but on the remainder they will be started after the handicap monos and will sail their own course using difference buoys (Middle Deep, Lime Wharf etc.). They also have a wealth of knowledge of cruising in the Dee which would be useful to us so it would be worth chatting to them if you see them around. See you all (hopefully) on the 24th!
Jon Bloor
Tell us what you think - your comments, contributions and photos are very welcome.
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