TY Delegates Report 3 December 2016
What a busy first half of the season seems to have been for us TY sailors. With our big contributions to running the 3 regattas we have put on for the club and other normal duty crew duties and with most of our sailing days to date have had a windy edge to them with the consequence of many of us falling fowl of the heavy winds breaking gear and such, it has taken a toll on our sailing day results sheet.  No guarantee that the second half of the season will be any better, but the alternative you would agree may not be that palatable either. Whether it’s nice, ugly, sunny, raining or anywhere in between sailing is character building remember, and gives us something to talk about other than politics religion and sex.
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Ponitscore Race 10
You probably noticed that Frou Frou was absent from Saturdays race. However I was provided with some firsthand reports of the proceedings. The finish for the first three boats home looked nail bitingly close, and I was also informed about a few embarrassing spinnaker handling moments and spectacular knock downs that livened up the event for many onlookers. It sounded like a very pleasant day on the water though and with 5 TY starters, one of the best supported club races this year.

Results for Pointscore 10
Position       Boat Name          Corrected time PBH (CBH)
First               Momentum            71.39  (71.97)
Second         Rosstered Off         73.34  (71.72)
Third             Beans                      74.31  (74.31)
Forth            Serenity                   75.36  (81.09)
Fifth              Whitewash              82.57  (82.57)

 At home and away events
Next weekend of course is our Around the Lake President V Secretary Christmas race. In my opinion this is one of the best club events of the year because we have an opportunity to take new crew aboard, particularly our juniors and their parents, to give them a trailer yacht sailing experience. Unfortunately, Frou Frou will not be able to participate so will miss out on the fun. But I do hope that as many of you as possible will show up for this event and welcome new people aboard your TY’s.
We have some interesting events coming up in the second half of the season. Notably the two St Georges Basin away adventures with the first one on the 4th and 5th February and the other on 4th of March.  
And then there is the rescheduling of TY Stay-Cation dates. We seem to be getting much busier with more competing interests demanding our time and looking at the second half of the season the only date that appears free for holding a TY Stay-Cation is the 8th of April, the last scheduled race of the season. This date would work out well because we already have an end of season self-catered Bar-B-Q scheduled.  However, if you would still like a TY Stay-Cation please review when you would be available and get back to me by 7 January so that I can publish the options.

One final note
Our next scheduled club sailing event is for 7 January 2017. TYs are down for providing the duty crew but, I have not been able to allocate an available TY crew to cover this date. If you are available for this date and willing to be the duty crew, please let me know as soon as possible so that we can have a race on that day. Please don’t leave it to the last minute and make me anxious.
On that note I wish you all a very happy Christmas and New Year break and see you next on 7 January for the first day of the second half of the Season.

The End Trev

TY Delegates Report for the Port Kembla Klassic Regatta 26 -27 November 2016
As the coordinator of this year’s Kembla Klassic my perspective of the event is probably a little different from the organising team, visitors and participants. Even so I hope you may be interested to read my thoughts about how the event went from my view of reality.
To start with the title of Kembla Klassic coordinator is a bit misleading. Most of the work is done by other people without a hint of coordinator interventions.
By the time I showed up late Friday afternoon all the heavy lifting had been done.  By then club members were lounging around entertaining early arriving visitors, taking a light refreshment or two and enjoying lake views. All the stuff like setting up the rigging and camping area and opening the club to welcome early arriving visitors just seems to happen magically. The preparation of the club support motor boats, making sure they are serviced and fuelled up, that the rounding buoys are inflated and loaded aboard ready to go also seems to happen magically. Things you need to do to produce the weekends racing results were installed and tested in readiness for tomorrows start. The registration desk and paperwork was set up in readiness to accept competitor registrations tomorrow morning.  All this and more pre-regatta preparation work is accomplished by club members pitching in and sharing the load, not by me, the KK coordinator. On Saturday morning, more club members show up before 7 am to make breakfast and coffee for early arriving participants.  And then there is the stuff that happens normally in the canteen. People arrive and start preparing food for lunches, afternoon tea and dinners. A hive of activity, no fuss just collaborative action.  All this work happens seamlessly, competently with good humour and without coordinator input.  
We were testing a new regatta format for this year’s Kembla Klassic, and like any newly introduced undertaking, things were bound to be missed. From little things like missed typos and wrongly worded sentences in the sailing instructions that require amending to change descriptions of course configurations to amending starting divisions to match class registrations on the day. To bigger safety related things like having ample support craft with experienced crews for both days of the Regatta and finding enough signal flags for starters, support boats and shore crew to cover the 2 courses and new course configurations. I consider myself lucky to be surrounded by a lot of resilient problem solving people who ironed out the new format glitches on the run and in ways that made the regatta coordinator look good.  
It would be remiss of me if I did not formally thank the many Port Kembla Sailing Club members who assisted in making this event possible and, from my perspective at least, successful.
First to those running the large course, and thanks to our stalwarts aboard the start/finish boat Rosstered Off, Jim Curry, Dave Smith, Sue Souter and Richard Hipsley. Starting and finishing multiple courses and divisions is juggling act and they somehow managed to pull it off.
Thanks to the course setters, Dave Morris and Paul Leaudais who, with a high degree of technical expertise,  set the large course up beautifully to accommodate the vast array of competitor needs, all done in very challenging weather conditions, particularly for Saturdays schedule of races.
Thanks to Dennis Forbs for providing and skippering his own motor boat for both days of racing and to Andy Blakeley and Ray Stanley for helping him on the water. Thanks to John Bubb for skippering and providing his motor boat support Saturdays races.
 
Thanks to Koonawarra for the use of their boat and to John Pinkerton & Ralf Skea for donating their time for the weekend.
 
On the small course thanks must go to Daniel Beattie for skippering and lending us his boat for starting/finishing and course laying duties and to Wayne McKinnon and Aaron Weare for assisting him aboard to run the small course schedule of races.
Thanks to Deno Olivieri for donating his time to skipper Puffer for the two days of racing and his assistant aboard on Saturday from the IYC, and Pier Panozzo and Brendan Mackey for the Sunday races.
I want to thank Brendan Mackey separately because I sent him out alone in little puffer in Saturdays 20 plus knot winds as support for the small course competitors. Little puffer is not the driest and comfortable of craft in a blow and Brendan obliged without complaint.
Both Deno and crew and Brendan had their work cut out during Saturdays races as the strong winds took their toll on the large and small course fleet with many needing assistance to return safely to shore.  
Thanks to the onshore crew of Bill Ledger and Ross Fife who made visitors feel welcome.  Among other things Ross is the champion barista spending long hours running the club café and dispensing medicinal caffeine to the many in need. Bill ensured the club and surrounds stay as safe and presentable as possible Their work reinforces the good reputation and friendly nature of our club.
Big thanks must go to Barry and Gail Grant for managing the race results. As most of us have experienced at one time or another, there is an endless list of things that can go wrong with working out the correct results for a multi class fleet, and it’s one of those things you must get right for the credibility and success of any regatta. It takes a load off the coordinators shoulders to know that this task is performed by competent people who were as concerned as I was about getting the correct results for competitors.
Thanks to Barry again and to Beck Curry for doing some amazing figuring out of the prize pool distribution for the many Regatta division place winners. If you have tried to do this yourselves, you will understand how complex it can be to fairly distribute regatta prize money. Beck also packaged the prizes up in a logical order so that we were more likely to give the correct sailors the right prizes at presentation time.
Thanks to Nikki Sullivan for managing the participant registration desk. Lots of things can go wrong there that can impact on how participants perceive their regatta needs will be met. Nikki I believe made them feel welcome and gave them the sense that everything was under control.  That’s how it looked to me at least.
A separate thank you must go to Barbara Hipsley for coordinating the running of the canteen. With the help of Richard Hipsley, the weekends canteen menus were planned, supplies picked up, delivered and set up at the club by Friday afternoon. That takes a lot of planning time and effort in my opinion.
I don’t know how to begin to thank all the people who supported the club through their work in the canteen during the weekend.  I do not have the literary expertise and grasp of the English language to adequately thank them in this newsletter.  I am hoping that this will be done by someone else in a more personal way than I am capable of. 
I realise I have concentrated mainly on thanking club members who gave up their weekend specifically to help with this event, but of course there were many others who contributed in a big way to ensure the regatta ran smoothly. Apologies for not mentioning you all by name but a thank you must go to you all as well.
As the event coordinator, it can make you feel somewhat redundant when people take on often complex tasks and complete them competently and without fuss. I am told that’s just how it happens if you have a good team around you, and this club has a very good team, and I am glad they were on my side for this event.   
For anyone unhappy about certain elements of the KK Regatta, I can understand how you may feel. You spend time getting ready for regatta events, making sure everything is working on your boat and sometimes traveling long distance just to compete. You have an expectation that a regatta will be well organised and run fairly, and, that it will deliver a good experience.  In this regard, we, the race committee and regatta coordination team, did our best to make sure everything reasonably possible was done to ensure visitors and participants ended the weekend feeling they received a positive KK Regatta experience.  And you cannot do much better than that I recon. That’s not to say that everthing went perfectly. No doubt we will reflect on our event coordination practices, consider all suggestions for improving next year’s Kembla Klassic.
At Sundays end of regatta presentation Richard Hipsley mentioned the fantastic show that Dean Souter put on piloting his foiling moth in the windy Saturday races. Dean was reportedly clocking well over 25 knots on some of the downwind legs.
But I wanted to end this report with what I think are performances of equal note worthiness.  That is the show put on by the Junior sailors from our own and visiting sailing clubs. In my opinion they performed brilliantly and all deserved to win first prize. They went out to race on the Large and Small courses in Saturdays challenging conditions. With the wind gusting over 25 knots in the first race some made the brave decision to complete the race and some made the brave and sensible decision to retire. Even though many of them may not have had the most wonderful of first race experiences they either stayed out on the large course for race 2 (still in very windy conditions), or sailed the second race on the small course that was delayed to later in the afternoon when the wind had eased. Then these young people got up and did it again for the Sunday races. No doubt some of their parents would beg to differ but, to a person, they were a delight to interact with. Always cooperative and generally cheerful and helpful human beings (remember this is coming from my view of reality).  It made me happy watching them sailing and on the shore playing games and having fun together. To me the junior sailors were inspiring, and a credit to their parents. 
Surely that’s enough of a reason for putting in the effort to run a regatta like the Kembla Klassic for participants to enjoy.

​The End Trev.

TY Delegates Report 29 October 2016.
Another unexpectedly windy afternoon with gusts over 25 knots in the latter part of today’s race made for exciting sailing. I was about to say “Can we please have a few not so windy days to give time for crew members to get familiar with which rope does what”, but that would sound a little hypocritical given my previous writings about how conditions for sailing are rarely perfect and that sailing helps us adapt to changing conditions. Still, I am sure you will forgive me for wishing for calmer weather on sailing days.
Saturday morning when I was in the process of going through the complexities of getting a TY on the water, I found myself envying the single hander dinghy and cat sailors. How easy it seemed for them to rig and unrig their small boat. Whether it’s the decision to sail on the day, to start and finish a race, or when to tack or jibe, the only person you usually have to consider is yourself.  Rounding up enough crew is never issue either.
This sounded very attractive to me. Then I reflected on what single handed sailors can miss out on. You can miss out on being able to share great sailing experiences “in the moment”, especially when it’s with new people you are introducing to sailing and the sailing club. Being aboard a boat with other crew members gives you time to “break the ice” and uncover interesting things about their life, their families and their aspirations. You get time to discover the special abilities those people possess and bring to the crew skill mix. In many little ways those personal traits people bring aboard make a day’s sailing that much better.  Single handed sailors miss out on being a part of developing a good team and opportunities to share those special moments with them when it all comes together in a smooth or cunning manoeuvre. For the present then I will stick to a trailer sailor and all that getting it from the garage to the water entails.
Although it’s nothing new, the trailer yacht fleet is making an effort to accommodate new people to sailing, particularly parents of junior sailors for the Saturday afternoon race. PKSC is known for its hospitality and it is in all of our interests to encourage new members participation in PKSC sailing events. Today Wayne McKinnon took on Pier and Daniel, parents of a couple of our junior sailors, out as crew aboard Serenity. Could TY skippers please indicate to me on the day if you can oblige so I can organise a ride for them. They will no doubt positively add to your enjoyment on and off the water
Frou Frou welcomed back Jess and Alan for number 2 race of their hopefully long sailing careers. This time we had Jess on the bow and Alan in the middle. It meant a quick learning curve for tacking and spinnaker handling in windy conditions. They both did exceptionally will I might add.
After a considerable absence we welcomed back Momentum and Serenity to our Saturday race program. Momentum was flaunting her new beautifully constructed centre board after her old one catastrophically failed at the end of last year’s sailing season. Momentums new board really looks the part and we wished her a successful passage around today’s course. Serenity had some mast rebuilding work done and was sporting her new stays today.  Likewise we were hoping her mast stays up for today’s race, and many more to come. Obviously our collective good wishes for the success of both boats and crew worked because they started and finished the race in very respectably.
Gear failure seems to be a component of the start to this sailing season for TY’s. After having to retire from last week’s race because of a broken gooseneck Rosstered Off was today wearing a new shiny gooseneck. Frou Frou was back fully restored with an  equally new and shiny mainsheet traveller and track, a consequence of the old one disintegrating  in the lead up to the start of a race a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully we would all survive the Saturday afternoon race intact.
Following significant and wide ranging consultation undertaken in the TY rigging area it was decided to run the abandoned Championship one race to today.
A big thanks to the Porters Rob, Bob, and Josh, today’s duty crew, for looking after us on the water they did a great job setting the course and rendering assistance to upturned boats.

​Results for Championship 1.
Position    Boat Name           Time in minutes CBH (PBH)
First            Rosstered Off          73.95 (74.39)
Second       Frou Frou                76.20 (76.91)
Third           Momentum            76.25 (74.01)
Forth           Serenity                  77.97 (72.17)

Just a reminder that there is no scheduled race for TY’s next weekend but we are needed to assist with the flying 11 States. I hope you can spend some of your weekend helping out.
Finally don’t forget the TY Stay-cation 4 December
The end Trev.