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Club Captain’s Notes
In this the Centennial year of the Challenge Trophy, the
Association Cup is back where it belongs and when all
is said and done racing and sailing at Royals seems to
be going OK. Its clearly a good time to move on and
after three years at the wheel, this Club Captain has
called for a change of watch.
I am very pleased to announce that I will be nominating
Captain David Ellis for the position of Club Captain
at the forthcoming Annual General Meeting. I am
confident that he will, if elected, bring new ideas and a
fresh approach to the development of the Club’s racing
and sailing program and thereby the benefit of the work
which has been done over the past few years. Such is
the nature of progress.
This is also time to formally thank Past Commodore
Graeme West for his unstinting and relentless work as
Club Coxswain. Graeme joined the Club in 1962, serving
his 4 year apprenticeship through the Committee system
to become “Commodore without a Clubhouse” in 1970
after the fire of 6 September. Never a man to be daunted
by a bit of smoke, he quickly set about the task of coordinating
the construction of the current club house
before completing his term in 1972. After a brief respite,
or possibly reincarnation, “Westie” was to be found
participating and eventually leading the on water race
support team. Initially providing his own boat Lancer,
then helping to secure sponsorship for others and more
recently overseeing the maintenance of the whole fleet.
Its not a part time job and we owe Graeme a lot. Thank
you.
Alistair McBride has generously agreed to accept the
position of Club Coxswain and has already assumed
duties. Alistair is an experienced seaman who was
heard to mention that “he wanted to give something
back to the sport” ...... have we got an opportunity for
you ! Alistair, who acquired a Master’s Ticket Class 1
during his time at sea, spent a number of years driving
somewhat larger ships than we have on offer but has
also clocked up an enviable number of passage miles in
Yachts. He joined Graeme West’s on water race support
team last year and will be a worthy successor.
Welcome aboard.
The Race just past
The editor insisted that we had to have proper
coverage of the Association cup – and so we
shall.(Ed, thanks Justin)
Race Director, David LeRoy and I, who drive
the selection process always receive numerous
questions... why did you choose that team and
“what’s Toe Cutter doing in the IRC A team when
she is unbeatable in AMS” and “What is this
doing racing in the AMS B team when Executive
Decision and Top Gun are an unbeatable in IRC
combination”.... and so on.
Well, the Association Cup is an altogether
unusual trophy...
Over the 4 races, the weather typically ranges
from drifters to blows with some of the races
favouring big boats (wind dropping out
syndrome), small boats (wind strengthening)
and possibly small boat disasters (not enough
wind to finish.)
Each Club has four teams of three but:
In any race only three of the teams count
In each team only the best two boats count.
In some of the divisions its effectively a two
horse race, in others there may be four effective
competitors.
Neither Sandringham YC nor RYCV has boats
which can dominate three divisions but the
winning Club has to pick teams such that its
best two boats in three of the 4 divisions beat the
competitions best two – across the full range of
weather conditions. As it happened RYCV was
able to win three of the divisions in two of the
four races and it was “Royals - 2, Sandringham
– 2” in the others.
Confusing, sure is, and team selection is definitely
not a task for a defence committee.
While poor team selection can cause the best team
to loose the opposite isn’t true. One has to start
with good boats and crews and in this connection
we were very well served this year. The Cup is
an occasion for new sails, sail measurement and
updated certificates and all skippers made a
special effort for the event.