Chairman Treasurer Secretary
12
May 2001
Dear Member
This is
my first newsletter since the Chairmanship has returned to the East Coast. I would first like to thank Mike Beaman for all the effort he has made for the Association
over the last 5 years. He oversaw the
second major rules revision in the last 18 years with all the letters and phone
calls that were involved. We are all
much indebted to him.
The National Championships will be held at Harwich this year.
Tom Hill (National Champion!) will be the Royal Harwich Class Captain
this year and he will therefore be organising the event. We are hoping to see several South West boats
travel to our part of the world this year to see if they can retrieve the
trophy. There has been a request from
the SW fleet to ask if any Harwich boats would be available to borrow. If any owners are prepared to lend please let
Tom Hill know.
Here are some dates for your diaries.
AGM Matters. The
minutes of the last AGM, Agenda, proxy forms and a paper proposing rule changes
etc. are enclosed. I think it is worth
reminding the membership that The East Coast fleet has lost 2 more masts in a
variety of incidents. There is a feeling
that the Z Spar Z170 section currently being used, is not stiff enough and that
the Proctor 4028 spar is more suitable.
The slightly stiffer (next size up) Z Spar section is 3 mm too large in fore
and aft measurement for our rules. It
satisfies the rules in all other respects.
There is therefore a motion to the AGM to increase the fore and aft
measurement in the rules to allow this stiffer spar.
It seems to me that there are two arguments
here.
On one hand, the
The other argument is that the Z spar section
is cheaper and, as they are local to (Harwich), we get very good and prompt
service. Also having some competition
should encourage Proctor to keep their prices down.
When a Z spar mast failed after inverting,
there were discussions between the Rules Committee and Z Spar and
Proctors. There is now a recommendation
from the East Coast Rules Committee, that Rule 10.1.5 should be altered to read
The mast shall have one set of spreaders for the upper shrouds, which may
be fixed, swinging or partly swinging. (Altered wording in bold
Italics) The current wording is
..which
shall be swinging. (Z spar felt that
the mast would not have inverted if the spreaders were fixed.)
I would like the membership to consider these
issues and vote on them at the AGM or send proxy votes.
News from East Coast. David Mayne
(Class Captain 2000) in Guillemot dominated the class racing in 2000. Guillemot managed to win all 3 of the series,
(Spring, Summer and co-owner Kelvin Douglas helming in
his first series, won the Autumn trophy).
Second and third places in the three series
were shared between Frank Norman/Jeremy Prosser in Apollo, David Kerridge in
Pegasus,
The East Coast Championship was a very close
affair with the possibility of any one of 5 boats able to win on the last
race.
1st John
Williams, 2nd Sharps family, 3rd David Kerridge, 4th
David Mayne.
News from
National Championship 2000. Six RHYC boats made the 400-mile
trip to St Mawes.
All crews reported a hugely enjoyable event. Everybody was made very welcome and good
results were achieved. This was felt to
be the highlight of the East Coast year.
Results:-
1st Tom Hill Artemis RHYC
2nd Gordon Sutton Telamon RHYC
3rd.
4 Doug
Sharps Osprey RHYC
5 David
Mayne Guillemot RHYC
6 David
Kerridge Pegasus RHYC
John Pack (crewing on Pegasus) enjoyed himself
so much that he bought Goosander and was seen sailing on the Orwell last
Weekend!
In these days of high tech communication, I
wondered if it might be a good idea to set up a website for the Association. Most other classes seem to have them
now. If anybody has any expertise in
this area I would be very grateful to hear from them.
I would also like to hear from anybody with
comments/suggestions regarding masts or rules etc. My E mail address has changed and is now