UKLA Chair blog #14
Last weekend saw the last of the four UKLA events in the autumn with the UKLA Noble Marine Inlands hosted by Grafham Water Sailing Club. With a huge entry of 188 and quite a few sailors who may not have been at the other UKLA events, it showed the attraction of a Midland lake venue at this time of year. With the help of the host club, at short notice we flighted the ILCA6s and added a second race area. Of course, well done to the sailors (and any parents that provided transport!) – you will see Jon Emmet’s excellent video of the event on our FB channel.
With a combined entry across all four events of close to 700, you can imagine the level of organisation needed so I wanted to highlight the effort put in by so many people.
I can’t mention everyone, but I wanted to single out two people. Firstly I would like to thank our class secretary, Ellie Ratusniak, who has worked very hard to ensure these events have been a success. Secondly our Sailing Secretary, Keith Videlo, who has worked tirelessly especially in ensuring we had two race areas at the weekend, effectively doubling on-the-water resources needed – race committee, safety as well as boats and RIBS. Beyond that we had have a super team of volunteers to make these events a success. At all our events, not alone is the Race Officer a volunteer, but there are also many other race officials and jury who are volunteers attending regularly who would not otherwise need to be there. Of course, there are many other parents and supporters helping with everything from launching, tallying, safety and the prize-giving. Thanks to everyone.
We said we wanted to make UKLA events more attractive to volunteers and encourage more of you to help run the class and we have made good progress on these. We now have a sign-up sheet for our events giving transparency and flexibility. As our events get bigger, we need more RIBS on the water and Brett Lewis, our Safety Officer, has introduced a payment of £80 per weekend on top of out-of-pocket expenses to encourage those that have a RIB to bring it to our events. Our recent call for various volunteer roles has seen around a dozen people come forward – our challenge now is to work to get these in place. Finally, we had a drinks reception for volunteers at Grafham – not helped by the race committee doing the races far to efficiently and finishing early on Saturday!
With the enthusiasm of all our volunteers and the UKLA committee we have been able to grow the class while trying to make it a welcoming place for everyone. Of course there is more to do, but we are heading in the right direction.
All the best
Mark
Check our UKLA website and calendar of events