Hi everyone,
East Region Achievements and Successes
It’s great to start with some positive news and I would like to congratulate Blackwater Sailing Club in Maldon on being the East Region Finalist in the RYA and Sailing Today with Yachts & Yachting Club of the Year Award. This is no small feat and the activity and development at the Club make it a worthy finalist. Voting is now open for the overall award, closing at midday on 23 January 2023. It would be great to Support them in their bid to become club of the year, please find out more and vote here.
We also recently saw five East Region volunteers recognised with RYA Volunteer Awards at a Ceremony in London, where the awards were presented by HRH The Princess Royal. We know that volunteers are critical to all the activities that clubs do in the Region, so it’s brilliant to see their efforts recognised. Huge congratulations to Richard Johnson – Francis Elkin Award (Challenger Class Association); Caroline Gibb – Lifetime Commitment Award (Southend-on-Sea Interclub Association); Jeremy Mills – Lifetime Commitment Award (Norfolk Schools Sailing Association); Margaret Lake – Lifetime Commitment Award (Waldringfield Sailing Club); and Norman Griffin – Lifetime Commitment Award (Grafham Water Sailability). You can read more about their achievements here and more about the Volunteer Awards here.
Season planning and recent events.
We are now progressing at speed into the development season, and I was delighted to see so many of you attend the Affiliated Clubs Conference at the weekend. We had 90 delegates representing 40 clubs come together to share ideas, successes and challenges, and get involved in discussions about how we can continue to develop our clubs. A wide range of sessions were delivered throughout the day – the subjects covered included: Funding for your club, Understanding your members, Legal and compliance, and the ever important subject of Volunteer recruitment and retention. If you missed the conference don’t worry, we are holding some online sessions during the week commencing 5th December. You can find out more here.
We were back at the Royal Hospital School on Sunday for the RYA East Cruising Conference. This is the first time we have held this event since 2019 and it was good to have 130 people in attendance. The content covered a whole range of topics delivered by experts in their field, with updates from the RYA Cruising Manager and Border Force. I would like to thank all of those involved in making this event successful and, in particular, the volunteers from RYA East.
Instructor Development Opportunities
I am in the process of finalising a range of Instructor Development opportunities over the coming months – please keep an eye on the RYA East web area for further information.
East Region Workshops
We are also in the process of arranging some local workshops that will take place face-to-face in February – again, please keep an eye on the RYA East web area for more info. I would also like to extend the offer of coming out to visit your clubs, it was so good to see people at the Conference and reinforced the value of the conversations we can have at club level, please do feel free to get in touch to arrange a catch-up.
Keep in touch
You can keep up-to-date with the latest East Region news on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
For now, I would like to wish you all the best for the coming weeks and hope that you manage to have a well-deserved break over the Christmas period.
Robbie
