Dear All
A short while from my last blog - life taking over again. However, having just returned from the dinghy show I firstly want to thank all the class members who helped plan, build and man the stand for what was an unbelievable show with an endless stream of people keen to know more about 420's.
The competition to win the use of a 420 boat was a real talking point and we have already had many new sailors to the Class submitting entries. A huge thank you much go to North Sails who have kindly offered sets of sails for each of the boats to help the sailors transition. Another really positive thing to come out of the show was the number of sailors visiting the stand, not ready to transition yet, but really keen to try out in a 420 in the future. This really is something we need to focus on as a class moving forward and we'll work on this.
On the water, it's been a number of weeks since the Winter Championships at WPNSA and I'm writing this with the Inlands at Rutland fast approaching. After Rutland we'll be over 55% of the way through the selection process for this summer's International Teams to represent GBR at the Junior Europeans & World Championships. There have been some minor amendments to the selection process document as discussed and agreed at WPNSA with Ian Walker. The website has been updated with the new documents, please take a look ahead of Rutland.
Some great work was done at the Winter champs to ensure boats measurement certificates were correct or there was an understanding of what needed to be done to make them correct. However, we still had a number of boats sailing with incorrect sail numbers. We might allow this as a one off however, those boats that requested this previously will not be allowed to do so again. So please can I ask that correct numbers are displayed on main sails at the Inlands. Spinnakers aren't a problem as we don't use them for identification or results taking but we'd encourage any numbers that don't match the boat to be blocked out.
Many others things are going on with the Committee:
- The event and training calendar for this year is very nearly finalised and already planning for 2024 and 2025 is taking place
- Work continues to finalise details for the Europeans and Worlds travel (this is not an easy task). Tiff Cawthorne will be holding another parent meeting to present the plans at Rutland.
- Win the use of a boat competition
- Transition training and transition camp are unbeing planned for the summer
- Social media continuation of campaigns; sailors always welcome to post and share
- Sponsorship of the Class; discussions are ongoing to bring in sponsors for events and class - watch this space
- Website updates continue; Ben doing great job of building out the technical areas.
It's great to see that the class is really buoyant currently both on and off the water and a great place to be as a sailor. But as you can see from the above there's always work and planning to be done in order to keep the class going and to make it better; we are all volunteers who do this. We will shortly be looking for new committee members to take on formal role within the Class. However, in the short term I'm asking for people to come forward to offer help across many roles. For example; we need:
- people to speak to clubs to book training / events,
- co-ordinate coaches for training
- co-ordinate rib, trailer or boat maintenance
- etc, etc, etc..........
This does not have to be onerous but please help support your class with whatever you can do; please grab a committee member to discuss.
Always loads to discuss but I want to finish on a sailing point. I wan to congratulate Alice and Oliver on winning the Oxford Blue in the SailJuice Series. I was sailing this event, watching them sail was a masterclass in fast 420 sailing that has caught many people's attention. You can watch the race tracking on the SailJiuce website if you want to see how much faster they were going - especially than me.!! Well done.
Happy sailing all.
Gareth
