South Bank Sailing Club Blog

Wow – the word of the day !  Wow ! What a transformation of our lovely club’s tired old kitchen and dreary race-box office into stunning state of the art facilities. Gone are the dreary hand-me-downs replaced with modern bright welcoming fittings. Allan and his helpers have done a fantastic renovation job. Wow ! What a lovely warm friendly welcome from everyone, new members and old as it is a long time since I have made it to the Club for a Sunday race. Definitely the friendliest club on the river. Wow ! For the steady strong NE breeze, allowing me to set a 3 mark, 5 lap course, using the first red navigation buoy on the Surrey bank as the first mark, up to mark 2 just beyond Crabtree but still on the Surrey side and across to mark 3 just below Crabtree on the Fulham side. Wow ! To being beaten by Ranelagh who sailed past before we had managed to launch our boats. Wow !   And thank you to the Rowers for holding back so that we could launch our boats. Wow ! To Roland and Leo for re...

Bonfire night went surprisingly well considering we didn’t have a bonfire. (The tide times didn’t work out for us to have one on the beach.) So we settled for medieval style fire pits and served up some top notch fodder thanks to the burger master general AKA Ray. Soups and mulled wine were also provided by the sharp brigade of volunteers that go by the names of Emma, Sally, Sarah and others. Big thanks to anyone who helped. Disaster almost struck when we ran out of gas for the BBQ but that’s nothing a cheap electric camping hob couldn’t fix. Here are some photos to prove it wasn’t a conspiracy…                

When I arrived at the club at some ungodly hour for the Ikea delivery the rain was bucketing down and the wind was whistling around the club house.  I was seriously wondering who would turn up on a day like this….. At 9.15, hey presto, Leo arrived, looking keen to get out on the water, followed by Henry and by 10.00 we had the full complement of safety boat crew.  Two sailors doesn’t make a race – three is the critical number,  so we agreed somewhat reluctantly to wait till 10.15 to see if anyone else arrived.  We talked about doing a mini race around the buoys instead and we were just about to get going to do that when  Renato arrived. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and rather stupidly I said we would go ahead with the downriver race but we needed to leave by 10.45.  That was never going to happen and eventually we started the race at 11.10. Renato with a  full rig and both Henry and Leo with radials in anticipation of the strong wind forecast. Renato leapt into the lead wi...