Vice Commodore's Jottings

THE AQUARIUS SAILING CLUB NEWSLETTER

The Vice Commodore Jottings - Nigel Knowles

By tradition this is normally the Commodore's "slot" - a pot-pouri of exhortations, advance notices and general ramblings to do with the Club.

But at the moment we have no Commodore! HELP! Faced with an impending empty white page, your desperate editor approached the Vice Commodores "Troika" for assistance. Perhaps they could write it together - each contributing a word in turn? - a parody on the party game called Consequences? (Now there's an idea for the Start of Season party!) Common sense has however prevailed and we have decided that we will each take a turn as "guest" scribe of the "Commodores jottings"

So! - How are we doing without a Commodore? Can we really cope? Is the Club about to fall apart? These questions have been much discussed over the bar on Wednesday evenings with nautical similes and metaphors enriching the debate. By common consent we are still "afloat" and we are not "rudderless".

On the contrary, Aquarius has plenty of people with ideas to steer us forward. At the other end of the ship we have a new "figurehead" i.e. a new President in Rodger Wheeler who has graciously agreed to assume the role from George Bray.

Pursuing the nautical metaphors, on the Bridge we have competent navigation officers, aided by look-outs , steersmen etc. and in the engine room there is still plenty of "umph" . Arguably the propeller needs attention - there is too much thrashing around creating froth and insufficient forward motion! We have plenty of passengers but the crew could do with a bit more management. Overall however we are in good shape - we just need a Captain to provide a bit of leadership to an otherwise happy ship.

In the absence of a Commodore, the day to day tasks of running the Club have been assumed by the Management Committee. In theory this has always been the case- and rightly so - but recent Commodores have been very "hands on" and arguably have got far too involved with routine tasks. The present situation has forced us to re-address just who does what. We have spent some time thinking about how the Club should be managed and how the tasks can be shared around in a sensible and practical way. We have as a result introduced some changes and a description of the revised Management Structure is elsewhere in this newsletter.

While asserting that we can manage, at least temporarily without a Commodore, it would be remiss not to acknowledge the sterling efforts of last year's Commodore, Rodger Wheeler (aided in no small measure by Linda). Rodger agreed to take on the role for one year only and he fulfilled it, leading from the front, with his customary energy and vigour. Thank you Rodger! An enormous "thank you" also to Joan and George Bray who stepped down as Secretary and President respectively at the AGM.

George and Joan go back longer than anyone can remember (and since they still have the Club records no one can actually check when they started in the Club!), but we do know that their service to the Club is unmatched. George himself took over as President from "Mac "McCoy - one of the Club's founding fathers - in 1984 (Quite an act to follow then, Rodger! Ed) and Joan has been Secretary for nearly as long. They have been an amazing double act and we are enormously grateful to them both

In contrast to last year when we were able to enjoy sailing throughout the winter months, conditions have been miserable this winter and there has been no sailing activity whatsoever. The river seems to have been in near permanent spate and has been over the bank and into the cellar on several occasions. Lets hope that things improve soon- the sailing programme is scheduled to start on March 31 - Easter Sunday- with the traditional Easter Egg trophy. Thereafter there is the customary programme of social and sailing events to look forward to. Good sailing!