January 2022
Happy New Year to you all. I hope all the New Year’s Day races went well! Of course, we’re very lucky that in this region we’re able to have a lot of activity during the winter months – we live in a great part of the country!
Online forums
Throughout January we have been running a series of four virtual workshops for you. They have the same four titles that we featured at the Affiliated Clubs Conference last November and are designed to help you with your planning for the coming season. Use this booking link to access the remaining workshops.
If you’ve missed the ones most relevant to your club, we’re also offering to come and deliver these workshops ‘live’ to clusters of local clubs. So, if you want more of your committee members to participate, and can join up with other local clubs, we’re looking for venues where we can run them. Let me know if you would like to host one, and we’ll organise a date.
Instructor training opportunities
We have a series of low-cost instructor development sessions planned for March and April. These sessions are a great way for your volunteers to blow away the cobwebs as well as getting up-to-date with all of the latest information for their discipline.
Club one-to-one meetings
I hope that, having spent some time at this year’s Affiliated Clubs Conference talking about development plans, and with all of workshops available, your committee will be full of ideas, possibilities and maybe questions. If you would like me or one of the team to come to your club to discuss your development plan, we would really value the opportunity. If you feel your club needs support in other areas, meeting to discuss other subjects is also possible; for example, you may like to talk about the delivery of training at the club.
Whatever your focus, we’re here to help. Please do get in touch.
South-West team
There have recently been some personnel changes amongst the Sailing Development Officers. We are still able to offer the same amount of support, but the way you access it has changed slightly. Rather than SDOs being contracted on a geographical basis, we now have a project-driven approach. Therefore, to access any club support that you would previously have spoken to Stuart Jones or Liz Saunders about, please now contact me. Your other South-West team contacts remain the same and you can of course also contact specific departments at HQ directly, including Training, Legal, Environmental or Recognition.
RYA eSailing Winter Club Championship 2022
All RYA Affiliated Clubs are invited to enter one eSailor to this year’s RYA eSailing Winter Club Championships before the 07 February 2022 deadline.
There will not be regional heats this year, though there may be national heats if sufficient numbers of sailors are entered.
The good news is that you don’t have to have a VIP account to have group racing – you can organise your own club racing and selection process to identify the eSailor going forward to the Championships.
Check out more information and the entry form.
Junior racing news from Regional Performance Manager, Duncan West
The 2021-22 Regional Training Groups (RTG) comprising 67 sailors from the five classes have had a great start to the programme. Over the winter we will be training at many different clubs as host venues. See the full list of all the sailors invited to the South West RTGs
This year I will continue to work with the BYS Recognised Clubs to support their reactivation and looking for ways that we can support more new sailors start to receive race training and enjoy the sport of dinghy racing.
You may have some sailors who are looking to gain their Dinghy Race coaching qualifications. We have a RCL2 course running at Exe Sailing Club on 12 and 13 February. The cost of the course is £125 per sailor and you can book here.
If your club would like to host a similar event, please contact Duncan.
RDO Rob Howlett
07876 330374
rob.howlett@rya.org.uk