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For various reasons, only 29 people made
it to this year's dinner and prize-giving, but it was sufficient to produce a
convivial and enjoyable evening at our usual venue of the Royal Norfolk &
Suffolk Yacht Club in Lowestoft. This began with Julia reading out
messages from the President and immediate past Commodore, neither of whom were
present, but both of whom were immediately identifiable from their words and, in
Will's case, the bad jokes.
After Grace had been said by the Vice
Commodore, members and guests then enjoyed their three course meal before the
Commodore, Margaret Kilner, arose to give her speech, as follows:
"Last time I stood here and
addressed you, I gave you a fairy story. Cinderella,
in fact. On reflection, I feel this
was perhaps a little frivolous, so this year I am going to talk about a much
more important and serious subject; that of health and safety.
We have recently appointed our very
first Welfare Officer, which is clearly an important step and, as you know, we
do advise that a suitable buoyancy aid should be worn at all times while afloat
during our club activities. But I
feel we need to go further!
We will now be asking that you
continue to wear your lifejacket when getting on and off the boat - a very risky
activity with all that water about. In
fact, you should continue to wear your lifejacket while on the riverbank and,
because I could not decide what a safe distance from the water is, you will wear
them into the pub, at the bar and until you are seated.
Then you may remove them. You
should be well versed in this procedure, as we followed it for much of last year
with our facemasks.
Remember to put your lifejacket back
on before leaving the pub. By now it
is likely to be dark, so we are going to ask that you install exterior lights on
your boat to assist with your return there.
You have a free hand as to what form this takes, so you may wish to
personalise your lighting to aid in identification of your vessel and to make
sure you find your way back to the correct bed.
Once in bed, you may remove your
lifejacket, provided you are over 18. Children
should be made to wear them for 24 hours a day.
Extra precautions might be felt necessary by tying small children to a
mudweight and you must fit an alarm to your cabin doors for added security.
This will ensure that, should your little darlings wander off in the
middle of the night, the whole mooring will be awoken and able to aid in their
rescue.
Your boat should be fitted with guard
rails all round. A maximum of four gates will be allowed for getting on and off
- two on each side - the exact locations are up to you.
Gang planks with side rails must be used at all times - none of this
dangerous leaping about, please. These
can be either hinged to the deck or removable.
Wheels are optional. When
moored in the strongly tidal reaches at or below St Olaves, Reedham and Acle
there must also be a safety net underneath your gangplank.
This may have an added advantage as an aid in catching any dropped mobile
phones.
There will be no single-handed
mooring allowed, as this is clearly extremely dangerous.
The only exemption is for Chris Dowsett, as he has Chloe to help him: he
just needs to train her to open the gate in the guard rail, drop the gangplank,
pick up the mooring line and walk ashore with it.
How hard can that be? Even
Saoirse can open things, push stuff over, pick up ropes and walk and she’s
much younger!
The next area I want to look at is
safety on the foredeck. One of the
most dangerous operations here is lowering the mast.
There are many procedures and safety checks to undertake before doing
this, so these are available as a separate appendix upon receipt of a stamped,
addressed envelope. However, I will
highlight a few points here.
Firstly, before taking off the
forepeak hatch and thus creating a deep and dangerous hole in your foredeck, you
must be roped to a buddy. This is so
that, should you fall down the hole, you may be rescued.
You must sound an alarm as the mast
lowers. This can be as simple as a
hand bell, or you can use a hooter, a siren or a whistle, or even something
fancy like they have on reversing vehicles.
“Stand well clear, mast lowering. Stand well clear, mast lowering.”
That sort of thing.
You will also need to have a large
and colourful burgee on the top of the mast which will double as a warning flag
when the mast is lowered. Joe Farrow
is ahead of us all here. Ideally,
I’d prefer you all to fly club burgees, so that you can be easily identified
and I can keep track of you all. The
only exception here can be if you are a flag officer of another yacht club,
although such disloyalty is to be discouraged and it should also be noted that
being a Vice Commodore of this club outranks being a Rear Commodore of any other
club, no matter how posh they are.
Ropes on the foredeck are a clear
trip hazard and so should be left neatly coiled at all times.
We all know that a neatly coiled rope will self tangle the moment it is
moved, so this has the added advantage that when they fall overboard they will
self knot and become too short to reach your prop.
However, years of observation has shown me that halyards work
differently. These need to be thrown
untidily on the deck to ensure they magically untangle as you lower your sails.
This does produce a conundrum though:
if your halyard falls overboard while you are lowering sail, the magic
straightening means it is likely to reach your prop which, as it turns, will
cause the sail to rise again. Clearly
not good. I did consider mandating a
small wall around the edge of the deck to prevent anything sliding in to the
water, but this then produces a trip hazard as you get on and off the boat....
I haven’t solved this one yet. Answers
on a postcard, please.
We now come to the actual sailing.
It is advisable to warm up before undertaking any sort of strenuous
physical activity, so there will be limbering up exercises before each race -
the briefing will be 30 minutes earlier to accommodate this.
Both myself and the OOD will be far too busy to organise this, so leading
the routines will be the Vice Commodore’s responsibility.
He is looking forward to this.
There must be cushioning underneath
your boom to protect everyone’s heads, but as an additional precaution we are
also going to mandate the wearing of hard hats.
If there are more than two of you in the cockpit, steel capped boots are
to be worn to protect your toes from being trodden on.
It goes without saying that industrial gloves are also vital to protect
against splinters and rope burn. And
don’t forget your face mask!
Because we use a loud shotgun to set
off races, ear defenders should be worn until after all boats have started. To
those already hard of hearing, we apologise that we no longer have alternative
visual canine signals at our starts since the sad loss of Pepper.
Chloe is proving far too laid back, so there is a vacancy here.
Any suitably qualified dogs may apply in person.
You must have thick padding all
around your boat during crowded starts. Mattresses
may be used, if you can’t afford bespoke protection.
These may be removed after rounding the first buoy (if you trust your
fellow competitors enough). All
projecting bowsprits must have red flags on their tips, unless they are fully
retractable and there must be a warning triangle on the end of your boom.
These are to be replaced by white front and red back lights in poor
visibility. You will soon get used
to telling the difference between these and your port, stern and masthead
lights.
In calm conditions, when you are
likely to be sailing slowly, or possibly even backwards, you must display orange
flashing lights to indicate that you are a hazard.
Actually, maybe we are all hazards, all of the time?
Perhaps the orange lights should be flashing all the time on every boat.
It’ll be ever so pretty out there - just like fairy lights at
Christmas.
Finally, everyone must, of course be
fully vaccinated and I shall be personally checking you all out to ensure your
compliance. However, if this worries
you for any reason, it should be noted that I am easily bribed.
A pint normally does the trick, but, when you go to the bar, don’t
forget your lifejacket!
I hope you will all agree that these
measures will keep us all safe and sound for many years to come, so I feel
confident in raising a glass to our future.
If you would please stand, I offer you a toast to The Extremely Safe Yare
Sailing Club."
In the now traditional sweepstake, Bill
Clark came closest to guessing the speech length of 9 minutes and 18 seconds,
although there were some other close guesses and one pessimist (optimist?) who
predicted 27 minutes and four seconds! We then moved swiftly on to the
prize-giving, with Eve Cronin being a popular winner of the photographic
competition (although sadly not present to collect her trophy); Modwena winning the
15% and over division of he Club Championship and Wandering Rose taking both the
Luna Barometer and the Wherry Trophy, the former on a tie break and the latter,
for the Club Championship, quite comfortably.
Lisa and Denise did a fantastic job of
selling raffle tickets, raising over £220 for club funds and, as usual, Terry
was Master of Ceremonies for the draw. The hamper was won by a somewhat
bewildered Jonathan, who hadn't quite grasped the concept that, when it comes to
raffle tickets, orange is the new pink.